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I 


SIMON PETER 

FISHERMAN 


t 


By 


“THOMAS*^ 


“ ?7i« souh of men were dried like dewj 
j^nd earth tried out with bitter needy 
Until one saidy ‘i dare be truey 
And followed up the word with deedy 
’Then heaven and earth were born aneWy 
And one man's name became a creed I " 




NEW YORK ; EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI ; JENNINGS & PYE 


f 



LISRAKY i-<f CONGPESS 
Two Copies Recoivod 


FEB 20 1904 

Copyright Entry 

^ - 1 

Glass xxc. No, 





Copyright, 1904, by 
EATON & MAINS. 


peter'* an& 5obn 


) 

I 

p 


Contents. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Back to Galilee 7 

II. Easter 16 

III. The Carpenter 33 

IV. Diotrephes 50 

V. The Master’s Use of Oppor- 

tunity 69 

VI. “A Little Child Shall Lead 

Them ” 87 

VII. The Good Shepherd 101 

VIII. Watching for the Morning 118 

IX. Cornelius 131 

X. The Temptation 153 

XI. The “Fourth Watch of the 

Night.” 170 






















SIMON PETER, FISHERMAN 


CHAPTER I 

I CAN never forget Simon Peter nor 
the month I spent with him on the Sea of 
Galilee. ’Tis twenty years since I left 
him waiting to glorify his Master in his 
death — ^yes, more than twenty years since 
that dark night when we toiled together 
against wind and wave till the fourth 
watch of the morning; still it seems as 
if it were only yesterday. 

It was Peter who first called me Thom- 
as, and who gave to my companion and 
lifelong friend the name of John; who 
enriched these names with associations 
and memories so unique and helpful that 
we love to use them in every moment of 
intimacy with little thought of the arbi- 
trarily given names of youth, and less 
of the courteous distinctions of church or 
school. John will ever be John and only 


8 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


John to me, and Peter in very truth the 
leader of the chosen Twelve. 

At the time of which I write John was 
pastor of a church down in Maine and 
I of one in B . We were inti- 

mate friends, loving one another as only 
brother ministers can. We had been 
chums in college and in the seminary, 
had entered Conference together, had 
married sisters, and had been near neigh- 
bors during our first two pastorates. 
John had taken a transfer to Maine partly 
on account of his health and partly 
because of an advancement in grade of 
appointment. His salary was not much 
larger, but his position relatively far 
higher than he thought he could reach if 
he remained in the N — Con- 

ference. He had succeeded well, very 
well, as he would undoubtedly have suc- 
ceeded had he stayed by his first choice, 
and at the time of our peculiar experience 

was pastor of a strong church in P . 

He had urged me to spend my vacation 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 9 

with him, and I had waited for no second 
invitation. 

“Mary and Martha,'’ wrote he, “can 
take care of themselves and the children 
without your help or mine, for two or 
three weeks at least. Indeed, I guess 
they’ll be glad to have us out of the way. 
You and I can rough it in the woods 
while they go to the cottage in Southwest 
Harbor. I know what I want and I think 
I know what you want; and, if you say 
so, we’ll go fishing with Simon Peter.” 

It was this last sentence in his letter 
that I asked him about as we drew near 
to camp a few weeks later. “Who is 
Simon Peter?” said I. “Why did you 
call that little town back there in the 
hills Nazareth? Are we on the road to 
Galilee?” I forget his answer, some sort 
of an affirmative; but I had guessed the 
truth, for such at times it seems to have 
been. For nearly a month we practically 
ignored the fact that nineteen centuries 
and thousands of miles separated us from 


10 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

the historic “Holy Land,” and seemed to 
disavow our training in the creeds and 
customs and church life of modern times. 
We lived as it were in other days, amid 
other scenes, and kept choice company 
with the leader of the Twelve and his 
Master. 

All that John knew of Peter was 
quickly told as we made our way down 
the carry to his camp. Years before, Si- 
mon Peter was living in one of the inland 
towns of the State. Though poor — he 
was no more than a fairly successful 
mechanic — he seemed born to be a leader 
and, in a necessarily restricted circle, was 
recognized as such. By nature he was 
impulsive, magnetic, courageous; by the 
grace of God, a man of holy life, simple 
faith, and rare power for righteousness 
in a humble Christian church. He knew 
God and ever lived as in His presence. 
He had remarkable insight into human 
nature, and consequently broad charity. 
His little training in the schools had left 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 11 

his mind free to follow its own methods 
of work and reach its own independent 
conclusions; even in John’s day — when 
he was pastor in that town — people used 
to refer to the strength and quaint origi- 
nality of his interpretation of Scripture. 

Among his friends was a laboring man 
of sturdy manliness and unsullied purity 
of character. His name I never knew, 
nor much of his history. He was a car- 
penter by trade. A fearful crime was 
committed. Circumstantial evidence con- 
victed him of murder. Two or three of 
his companions gave damaging testimony 
— fearfully untrue, as was afterward 
shown; so that he was sentenced to the 
extreme penalty — and Simon lost his 
reason. 

For a time Peter was kept under guard, 
till it was thought that he had recovered ; 
but one day he was missing. A little 
boy reported that he had seen a man an- 
swering his description hurrying along at 
nightfall through the edge of a neighbor- 


12 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

ing village saying over and over again, 
“Go tell Peter that He goes before you 
into Galilee; there shall ye see Him/’ 
For more than twenty-five years nothing 
had been heard of him, and it was sup- 
posed by the very few who remembered 
the story that he was dead. It was John 
who had found him in one of his venture- 
some vacation trips into the woods, and 
he and I were the only ones, with one ex- 
ception, who ever afterward met him. 

“He did me good,” said John, with 
hearty simplicity, “even though I was 
with him only a few days. He brought 
the Master very near to me, and gave a 
reality to the old stories of the gospel 
that even now is a daily inspiration. He 
rolled away the stone before the grave, 
and the Lord appeared in newer life.” 

“And you think he’ll do me good?” 
said I, suggestively. 

“Yes,” said John, “I do.” 

I knew very well what he meant. If 
ever there lived a noble man it was John. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 13 

Conscientious to the extreme, affectionate 
as a woman, unselfish and yet ambitious 
to further his own aims where they con- 
flicted in no sense with the rights of 
others, he justified his name. I knew all 
about his fight for freedom, the misery 
of his depression and self-consciousness 
due to his highly sensitive nature, and his 
literal reception of the New Testament 
ideal of character — and I knew too of his 
victory and his entrance at last into the 
sunshine of a simpler and less selfish faith ; 
and I began to suspect that Simon Peter 
might have had something to do with the 
change. Everybody said that it was the 
summer vacation four or five years before 
that had made him what he now was. He 
had come back from the woods a different 
man. During the following winter he 
had preached the gospel of the living 
Christ with a simplicity and fervor and 
holy abandon such as he had never shown 
before ; and God was wonderfully honor- 
ing his ministry. Many a time I had 


14 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

almost envied him. Sunday after Sunday 
I brought to the church the best results of 
a week of honest study, only to feel that 
the food I had for the people was no more 
suited for their need than the few un- 
blessed and unbroken loaves and fishes for 
the hungry thousands on the hillside of 
Galilee. What I had needed the Master’s 
touch, and for some reason or other it did 
not seem that I could get it. 

I knew what he meant. He was hoping 
that the old fisherman would help me too ; 
for John knew me as well, and kindly, as 
I knew him. For years hardly a week 
had passed without the exchange of let- 
ters, and to him as to no one else had I 
told the story of my longing for a better 
sight of Christ. He never chided me be- 
cause of my gloom ; indeed, he was kind 
enough to say that I had the rare virtue 
of stern self- judgment, and consequently 
of stern self-condemnation, and to com- 
mend me because, as he said, I was honest 
enough and loyal enough to the God of 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 15 

truth to ‘^prophecy according to the pro- 
portion of faith’^ and never beyond it. 
Notwithstanding this too frequent melan- 
choly mood of mine, I never believed that 
I was out of place in the pulpit. At times 
I felt that it would break my heart if I 
were compelled to leave it, yet I had to 
think of such a step as a possibility. I 
needed a personal Easter Day. I needed 
one of the forty days of the resurrection 
life of Christ, worth more to a man of my 
temperament than a year of the Galilean 
ministry on its path toward the cross. 
Many a day at the communion table of 
our Lord had I cried from the depths of 
a troubled yet expectant soul, ^‘Reveal 
thyself unto me, O Lord, in the breaking 
of bread,’' yet I had not seen Him as I 
wanted, and as I believed I had the right 
to think I would yet see Him. 

‘‘So you think he would do me good, 
too?” said I again. 

“Yes,” said John, who had been quietly 
watching me, “I do.” 


16 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


CHAPTER II 

‘Teter/’ said I the morning after our 
arrival, ‘'how did you come to place your 
camp here? Is the fishing better in this 
lake than anywhere else? Couldn't you 
find a quiet spot without coming so far 
away ?" 

It was a foolish question, and I imme- 
diately regretted it; I saw what the an- 
swer would be, and felt instinctively that 
it was bad policy, to say the least, to ap- 
pear so painfully out of sympathy with 
my surroundings and my peculiar host. 

‘T was told to come here," was the 
simple answer. 

“Who told you? The Master?" 

“Yes." 

“When?" 

“Easter Morning, at the class meeting. 
A friend brought me the message from 
the tomb. But," and here he hesitated 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 17 

for a moment and looked at me search- 
ingly, “who are you, anyway? I thought 
you were Thomas. You look like him, 
and from what John told me last night 
you ordinarily act like him; but Thomas 
isn’t the man to forget the story of that 
day or to talk the way you’ve been talking 
ever since you came here. Who are you, 
I say ? What did you come here for ?” 

The words were sharp and suggestive 
of rising anger with possibly something 
of fear, though behind them all I saw the 
evidence of bitter disappointment, if not 
of positive pain. The poor fellow had 
been looking for the rest of the Twelve — 
or some of them — for years. 

“I can’t tell you,” said I, quietly. “You 
can call me Thomas, if you want to, 
though that is not my name. I’m enough 
like him, God knows, in moments of 
doubt, and I hope at my best in my loy- 
alty. Still, you’ll have to look elsewhere 
for the Thomas you used to know; and 
if you were the man you think you are” — 
2 


18 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


I was now speaking as sharply as Peter 
had, though with no justification, really 
more in grief than in anger, more to my- 
self than to him, chagrined because I had 
so speedily spoiled the pious little conceit 
of John — “if you were really Simon Peter 
and my old friend there John ; if this lit- 
tle lake were really the Sea of Galilee ; if 
all these years of progress and pain, these 
centuries of mingled sunshine and gloom, 
were really no more fact than an old fish- 
erman’s fancies, I suppose I might quite 
easily pass for Thomas.” 

As I spoke a gradual change came over 
his face. Anger gave way to sadness, and 
fear to eager interest. The hard lines 
softened and the danger light proved to 
be no more than the lightning flash. He 
came quickly toward me, seized me im- 
pulsively, put a soulful of welcome into 
the first demonstration of greeting he had 
shown me, looked into my eyes longingly 
for a moment — and then hurried away to 
find John. “Poor fellow,” I heard him 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 19 

say. ‘‘I understand all about it. I felt 
that way once.” I saw him tap his fore- 
head significantly and point toward me. 
Ever afterward, no matter what I said or 
did, 'Peter could not be shaken in his be- 
lief that I was Thomas; and for patient 
sympathy, tender care, and unlooked-for 
little kindnesses he was the equal, I doubt 
not, of the apostle whose name he bore. 
I overheard him praying for me more 
than once, and his prayers at last were 
answered. 

I found him eager to talk when next 
we met, a few hours later. We had just 
finished our supper and were seated a 
little back from the full glow of the 
camp fire, ready for the sympathy and 
confidences inseparable from such a scene 
of unbroken peace. Before us lay the lit- 
tle lake lazily rocking itself to sleep; be- 
hind us swayed the untrodden forest 
stretching back for miles over mountain 
side and valley, giving fragrance to every 
breath of welcome and a hiding place to 


20 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

many a timid tuneful host. The breaking 
of the little waves upon the shore, the 
crackling of the newly kindling boughs, 
and the occasional call of some belated 
bird to his mate were the only sounds 
heard; and they simply emphasized the 
sense of glorious rest. 

'‘Yes,’’ said Peter, "you seem to have 
forgotten some of the scenes of that day. 
You missed it, not coming to the prayer 
meeting. Some of us, you know, had seen 
Him — Mary for one. She had been out 
to the graveyard early that morning and 
had met Him face to face! had heard 
Him call her by name ; had spoken to Him 
about His going home — had even tried to 
hold Him back when He said He was 
going right away; had taken Him, you 
know, for the gardener at first before she 
turned around to look at Him. Even 
then she didn’t know Him right off, be- 
cause her eyes were filled with tears and 
her interest was elsewhere — why, she paid 
no sort of heed even to the angels who 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 21 

would have made an Elisabeth or a Han- 
nah happy for a lifetime just to have 
seen them. She took Him, I say, for the 
gardener till He called her name ‘Mary.' 
It was a testimony to be remembered, 
Thomas, that she gave that night, and it 
seems strange that you don’t recall it. 
You missed it, I tell you, in not having 
heard her give it. It takes a woman to 
tell the story when she herself is the cen- 
ter of the love that’s in it. The other 
women had their story, too — for they had 
seen Him about the same time that Mary 
had and had received the message from 
Him for the rest of us which brought me 
here. Then before the meeting closed I 
had my experience to give, and Cleopas 
and Luke had theirs — the best of all for 
it was the latest — and then the Master 
Himself came. You can get an idea, 
Thomas, of the eagerness of those two 
men who had just come back from Em- 
maus when you know that the Master had 
left the town before them but had been 


22 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


passed by them somewhere on the road. 
I guess they had run the entire distance. 
And the way they felt, we all felt. Talk 
about your Turning heart’ ! Every one of 
us had it. You missed it, Thomas, you 
missed it.” 

‘‘He was there eight days afterward, 
you know,” suggested John. 

“Where did you hold your meetings?” 
said I, regardless of this well-meant en- 
deavor to secure for me the favor of 
Peter. “I mean, where was your upper 
room ?” 

“In the church, of course,” replied Pe- 
ter, “in the vestry of the old church on 
High Street. We used to meet there 
Tuesday and Thursday nights as well as 
Sundays; not many of us, it’s true, still 
He was always there, and sometimes the 
room was crowded. I’ve seen as many as 
thirty at the altar at one time seeking 
forgiveness.” 

“Thomas was there eight days after- 
ward,” said I, hastily, fearing that he was 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 23 

treading on dangerous ground. “I want 
to hear the rest of your story of those 
early days.” 

“Well,” said Peter, “if you don’t re- 
member our story, I remember yours — 
and if you want it. I’ll tell you — though 
it seems as if you ought to be speaker, not 
I. ’Twas your love that made you doubt 
what we told you — your large faith, not 
your little faith ; your big heart and your 
loyalty to the Master. If you’d loved 
Him less you would have believed every 
word we said. Maybe it’s all right for 
you, John, to call yourself that disciple 
whom Jesus loved. Still, I don’t like it. 
There were others who loved Him just as 
much as you did, and there were others 
who thought that He loved them as much 
as He did you. Remember the message 
Mary and Martha sent, don’t you? ‘He 
whom thou lovest is sick.’ No name 
given, and yet they knew that He would 
know who was meant. So Thomas 
thought; had an idea that if he were 


24 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


ready, when the rest of the Twelve 
hung back, to go to Judea that he 
might die with Him, the Master would 
be ready to do as much in return. You 
couldn’t conceive, so you said, of your 
Master up and around among His friends 
and not finding you. T don’t believe He 
has risen, and I won’t believe it, either, 
till I see for myself. The idea that He 
has time and desire to hunt up all the rest 
of you and pass me by is more than I can 
bear. If He can walk to Emmaus with 
Cleopas and that other disciple who 
never made any stir among us, and linger 
around in the garden waiting for Mary 
and the rest of the women, and hunt up 
Simon Peter, who had just denied Him’ — 
that’s the way you put it, Thomas, and 
’twas true — ‘and find James, and then 
meet the ten of you together. He can find 
me; and what’s more, if He’s risen He 
would find me. I don’t believe that 
there’s a spot in Jerusalem where we’d 
worked together that He wouldn’t have 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 25 

visited. He would have found me in my 
home, or out in the fields where I used to 
pray, or down among the poor, or some- 
where — I’m sure of it; and if it comes to 
disbelieving either Him or you — yes, the 
whole lot of you — I’ll believe Him. You 
can’t give me testimony enough to prove 
that the grave doesn’t hold Him. If it’s a 
fact that He is risen. He must show it for 
Himself.’ That’s about what you said, 
Thomas, isn’t it?” 

“I don’t know,” said I, though I hated 
woefully to disappoint him. ‘T reckon 
that’s about the way Thomas felt; that 
much I can say. But why did you come 
here?” added I, returning to my first 
question. 

^‘Because He asked me to,” said he, 
evidently perplexed if not annoyed at my 
clumsiness as well as density. “I was 
sure of one thing — He hadn’t forgotten 
me. Even a command to come would 
have been a blessing, I felt so bad. If He 
had forgotten me I’d have died; for I 


26 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

was mighty sensitive over my denial, and 
felt that there was precious little to choose 
between Judas and myself. He sold the 
Master for a bit of silver, while I sold 
Him for the smile of a servant girl. 
’Twas worth everything to know that He 
hadn’t forgotten me. Friday and Satur- 
day were awful days. The thought of the 
tomb where He lay, and where our hopes 
lay, too ; the bitter memory of that hour 
by the fire in Pilate’s courtyard ; and the 
pain of His look that broke my heart — 
it’s a wonder that I stood it. Some didn’t. 
Some of us lost their reason and went 
around aimlessly, as if in a dream. Some 
Went off home. A few held on to a bit 
of hope till Sunday. ’Twas everything 
to hear one of the women call out to me 
on Easter Day, ‘Have you heard His 
message? “Go tell my disciples and Peter 
that I go before you into Galilee.” ’ Go 
tell Peter! Not Simon, mind you: He 
kept that for our private meeting on the 
seashore yonder. Go tell Peter! Why, 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 27 

Thomas, if what had followed had been a 
command to go to my death to atone for 
my fearful sin I’d have hailed the mes- 
sage just the same. There’s nothing like 
being remembered. Thank God,’ said I, 
‘He remembers me still.’ 

“ ‘So,’ said I, a little later, as the beauty 
^of it began to dawn upon me, ‘He wants 
to meet me in Galilee. In Galilee ! In the 
old familiar place — His old home and my 
old home, too.’ God knows I would have 
gone to meet Him anywhere; to the judg- 
ment hall, to the cross, to the center of 
the sneering cowards who could pierce 
Him when dying but who couldn’t face 
Him coming out of His grave — anywhere, 
yes, anywhere — and would have thanked 
God for the glorious chance — but to Gali- 
lee! that was too much. I was sick of 
Judea. Every spot suggested failure or 
strain or burden of some sort. Not so the 
old home — I loved every hill and valley, 
every village and town. Even He was a 
different man when there— -under less ten- 


28 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


sion, with less of fearful care; He saw 
something besides the cross, heard some- 
thing besides the moan of a sinful world, 
lived a little bit in the present. Now and 
then He’d stop to watch the sower scatter 
his seed, or the shepherd tend his flock, 
or the flsherman mend his nets; would 
hear the young raven cry for his food, or 
see the sparrow fall from his nest to the 
ground ; would see the beauty of the lily 
by the path or the pathos of the bruised 
reed. Not so in the city. He didn’t see 
much there. Jerusalem was a large place 
and full of strange scenes and packed full 
of lessons for such a mind as the Master 
had ; but He seemed to see very little of 
it all. One great hill loomed up before 
Him and He walked in the shadow — 
and saw life in the shadow — ^that it cast, 
‘Thank God!’ said I, T ’m going to get 
out of this place home again. Judas be- 
longs here, but the Master and the rest 
of us belong in Galilee.’ 

“Then, too,” added the old man, aglow 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 29 

and eager with his thought, evidently 
thinking in his simplicity and loyalty that 
he was honoring his Master in his simple 
story, “He made it mighty easy for me. 
He said He was going on ahead — go 
before you into Galilee.’ None of us 
could feel that we ought to stay around 
the city after that. There was much to 
be done there — a good many well-inten- 
tioned disciples to be looked after, four or 
five hundred all told; a good many lies 
to be answered, and a lot of sermons to 
be preached and converts to be made — 
but He knew it all. If He could leave of 
course we could. I think I’d have felt 
pretty mean if I’d gone up to Galilee 
ahead of Him — if I had left Him alone 
in the center of His enemies — but I didn’t 
have to. Before I started on the road 
He was a good distance ahead. Then, 
thought I, if there’s anything to say about 
these past few days up there in the old 
home — if any one of the old friends wants 
to hear what has happened — He’ll be the 


30 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


one to tell it all. There isn’t one of us 
that will get there before Him. If there’s 
anything to be done He will see to it. If 
He has any new plan He’ll get it well 
started. Of course I came to Galilee. 
Mind you,” added he, ‘T would have gone 
on ahead if He had said so. If He had 
sent word that He was going to preach 
to the spirits in prison — going to descend 
into hell even — and wanted me to sort of 
clear the way for Him, I’d have gone, and 
mighty gladly, too. I felt so bad over that 
sin of mine, and I felt so glad that He 
had made it all right, I would have gone 
anywhere — alone, too — and miles ahead 
of the rest if He had said so. Of course 
I came to Galilee.” 

The old man was walking up and down 
before the fire as he spoke, seemingly 
more and more unconscious of his sur- 
roundings. John and I were evidently by 
this time absolutely out of his thought. I 
doubt if he saw us. He looked out over 
our heads to the shadow of the great 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 31 

woods beyond, raised his voice to a higher 
clearer note, and spoke less rapidly though 
with greater fluency, accompanying his 
words with more and more of gesture, un- 
studied though full of grace and force. 
We saw in a moment that he thought he 
was preaching; that he saw before him 
some scene of other days — some night 
service of a Methodist camp meeting in 
the woods, it may be ; that in the shadows 
of the forest there were sitting hun- 
dreds of fellow-sinners, many of them un- 
awakened and many on the point of turn- 
ing to God, and that he was the privileged 
one who should give the exhortation. 

‘‘He can^t forget you, brother,’’ cried 
he at last. “You have been too much to 
Him, and He has been too much to you. 
He wants to meet you in the old place — 
right here where once you saw Him — 
right here where we’re ready to pray for 
you; and if you come, you’ll find He’s 
waiting — He’ll get here first. Come, he 
bids you, come.” 


32 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


I do not know how we quieted him, or 
ourselves, either, for that matter. I know 
that we all prayed, and that finally during 
the prayer of John there came peace, and 
that Simon somehow or other seemed to 
find himself just when we began to dread 
the worst. The sermon had its effect up- 
on me, and I could think of little else. 
“Would to God,’' said I, as I looked at 
my companions at last asleep, “that I 
could send home a word as straight as 
that of Simon Peter, and every word the 
truth, too. Guess this is Galilee, after 
all.” 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


33 


CHAPTER III 

“Peter,” said I, a few days later, as 
we were resting at noon at the end of a 
hard morning’s tramp along the northern 
shore of the lake, “how did the Master 
look? Was He like John? Like me? 
I’ll trust your word,” said I, as for some 
reason he hesitated to reply, “more than 
that of anybody else — infinitely more 
than the opinion of the best of the gloomy 
monks or the unregenerate artists of the 
schools of modern days.” 

This question, I should add, was the 
result of a conversation between John 
and myself. For a time John had held 
to the traditional conception of the ap- 
pearance of Christ — to the halo idea, the 
effeminate dress, the far-away heavenly 
gaze, the lofty unapproachableness, and 
the mystical indefiniteness that had taken 
away the Lord from many a humble be- 
3 


34 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

liever. For a few years he had talked 
mysteriously about the “God-Man,’' or 
when especially daft — though he thought 
scholarly — about the “Theanthropos.” 
Once he told me when I said something 
about the limitation of the life of faith 
which the Master led in common with the 
rest of us, “True, He did not know this 
as man, but He did know it as God” — to 
my disgust and I think a little later to 
his own. On the other hand, I had main- 
tained that the Master was a man, and 
that He had looked like a man; though 
in some way all of God that could be put 
into a perfect human soul, where there 
was no sin nor feebleness of power, was 
in Him too. “If you want to quibble 
over a phrase,” said I, “and go back to 
the slavery of the schoolroom. He was 
all God but not all of God ; and He was 
all of Man, too. Even after He had risen 
from the grave He took pains to dissipate 
the ethereal conception that some even 
then held. ‘Handle me,’ said He, ‘spirits 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


35 


have not flesh and bones such as I 
have/ ” 

“Did He look like either of us?” re- 
peated I, as Peter still hesitated to answer. 

“No,” said he, “He didn’t. First of 
all, neither one of you is enough of a 
man — I mean in physical force or beauty. 
You are not strong enough. He could 
wear out a dozen such men as you are. 
For fifteen years or so He had been a 
hard-working mechanic, much of the time 
in the open air, with all the work that He 
could possibly do. They used to come to 
Him from all the country round — partly 
because they liked Him, and partly be- 
cause He did absolutely honest work — so 
that He was known as ‘the Carpenter;’ 
when He stood up to preach His first ser- 
mon that was the name they identified 
Him by — He was ‘the Carpenter,’ and 
that meant among other things a good 
hard workman, and that meant good 
health. Then, too. He used the simplest 
food. Even when He could get just what 


36 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


He wanted during His days of popularity 
here in Galilee He lived on fish and 
bread; the food He gave the five thou- 
sand was what He had intended for the 
Twelve and Himself. Then, too,” added 
Peter, quite deliberately — I saw now the 
reason of his former hesitation; he had 
been summoning his answers in more reg- 
ular order than was usual — *‘He knew 
nothing of sin from personal experience; 
He had never done wrong — had never 
weakened His force by unholy dreams, 
or intemperate desires, or unbalanced ac- 
tions ; had never felt the bite of remorse, 
or the weight of a sinful memory. He 
always did that which was pleasing in the 
sight of God — and His body could but 
show it.” 

“ ‘His strength was as the strength of ten, 

Because His heart was pure,’ ” 

added John, quietly, unconsciously doing 
for Peter what he did always for himself 
in his own work — fortifying a bit of inde- 
pendent thinking on the part of a disciple 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 37 

by the ringing declaration of the same 
truth in the words of a master. 

“Yes/' said Peter, somewhat surprised, 
not knowing, of course, the source of the 
quotation or that it was a quotation — 
“Yes," said he, “though I said a dozen — 
and that's little enough. You remember 
the time He cleaned out the temple, don't 
you? — the time He frightened the very 
life out of the money changers and those 
who sold doves? Well, all the rest of us 
put together couldn't have done what He 
did that day alone. They didn't leave for 
shame," added he, quickly taking almost 
the very words out of the mouth of John 
in his shrewd reading of our thought, 
“but because they were scared. They 
weren't the men to feel shame; they 
didn't know the meaning of the word. 
They weren't overpowered by His holi- 
ness, not a bit of it. They heard the 
swing of the stinging lash, and they knew 
a strong man was after them. They con- 
cluded to get out while they had a 


38 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


chance,” chuckled the old man, keenly in 
sympathy with his own interpretation, 
“and study His divinity outdoors on the 
sidewalk.” 

“Was that the reason,” said I, “why 
the rabble that followed Judas — soldiers, 
too, a good many of them — didn’t dare 
face Him in the garden of Gethsemane ?” 

“Yes,” said Peter, “partly the reason, 
at any rate. Why imagine that hard- 
hearted, thick-skinned, dull-brained sin- 
ners who hadn’t had a quiver of decent 
emotion for years could all of a sudden 
see beauties and glories that we couldn’t 
see till after Pentecost? They were 
scared, I tell you, for they saw a 
strong man after them in noblest 
anger.” 

“You’re going too far, Peter,” said 
John, “You’ve no right to speak of Him 
as angry.” 

“What’s that?” said he. “I wasn’t 
through talking about the temple — I’m 
not so sure about the scene in Gethsem- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 39 

ane. No right to think of Him as angry ! 
What’s the matter with you? If He was 
never angry where did He get some of 
the words He used — or, rather, where did 
He get the inclination to use them? I 
remember once, when we were coming 
home one night after meeting, as we 
turned the corner of Water Street — at the 
corner of Water and Pleasant — that a 
little child ran crying out of a tenement 
house right into our very arms, and that 
after her there lumbered along a crazy, 
swearing, drunken brute of a man. I re- 
member that the Carpenter — ” 

‘Wou were talking about the appear- 
ance of the Master,” said I, with a rare 
inspiration of good sense. ‘^Of course 
He was angry — let that go for a time. 
You gave us one of your old sermons 
with your firstly, secondly, and thirdly, 
you know, proving that He was a man 
every inch of Him.” 

‘Wes,” said John, “and if this is so — 
this that you say of His manly strength — 


40 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

then He must have toiled fearfully during 
the last three years to have weakened un- 
der His burdens as He did. Did He?’' 

‘‘Did he?” responded Peter, reverently. 
“Did He ? When He began His ministry 
He was only thirty years old; when He 
quit — I mean when they killed Him — He 
was thirty-three, and yet He had aged so 
that close critics said He was somewhere 
near fifty. Work it out either way you 
want to, you will see what sort of a man 
He was. If you start with some sort of 
an idea of the weight of His burden, you 
will see what His strength must have 
been to have carried it so long; if you 
start with an idea of His strength, you’ll 
get a conception of what He must have 
done for you to have weakened under it 
so soon.” 

“By the way, Thomas,” said he, after a 
pause broken by no question on the part 
of either of us, “why do you look so tired 
out? What’s the matter with you?” I 
suppose the contrast between the tireless 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


41 


Worker of whom he had been speaking 
and myself drew a closer attention to my 
condition. ^‘One would think to look at 
you that you ought to have come to Gali- 
lee when I did.” 

In my answer I told him frankly and 
fully of my work as a minister of Christ 
in the busy days in which we live ; of my 
church in the city with its thousand and 
one cares ; of my habits of study ; of the 
strain upon my sympathy as I saw the 
needs of the poor and sick and sinful so 
imperfectly met by anything that I could 
do ; of the danger of the deadening effect 
of continued contact with the woes of 
life, the benumbing at last of the priceless 
powers of a tender heart; and of my 
lonely struggles at times with doubt 
when it seemed as though there was no 
one near to help. “Mary and Martha,” 
said I, in answer to a questioning look on 
the part of John, “had to wait two days in 
gloom while the Master delayed His com- 
ing. I was no better than they. The 


42 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

Syrophoenician woman, who had faith 
more than anyone whom Christ had met, 
for some inscrutable reason failed to get 
for a time any kind of an answer to her 
piteous plea for aid. She prayed as few 
of us have prayed, yet He answered her 
never a word. I was surely no better 
than she ; yet,'’ added I, “I have kept my 
faith, have beaten my way through, have 
found Him at last, and intend to trust 
Him to the end, in daylight or gloom. 
Still I’d like what the saints call ‘the sec- 
ond blessing.’ Peter, I want you to pray 
for me.” 

“I’ve already done so,” said he, with 
hearty simplicity, “and am going to keep 
at it till you get out into the light — that 
is,” added he, “if God wants you in the 
light. Maybe He has to keep you in the 
darkness — who knows? Do you remem- 
ber the prayer of the mother of James and 
John? She wanted her children — and I 
suppose they were agreeable too,” said 
he, somewhat vindictively — “to get the 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 43 

highest blessing that the Master had to 
give; she thought that all she had to do 
to get it was to ask in faith believing — 
but she failed. Who’s to say whether 
you’ll be better as a helper and a saviour 
of your fellows under the light of a great 
and novel revelation of God or in the 
gloom of the average man. Seems to 
me,” said the old fellow, quite decidedly, 
^‘that you smash your humility to make 
your faith ; and I don’t believe that pays. 
Quit your worrying, I say, and go about 
your business right where you are, and 
God will guide you where He wants you. 
As for me,” continued he, unable to get 
an answer from John, at whom he was 
slyly thrusting, don’t dare to worry. 
I’d go mad if I did. What is more, I 
don’t dare to pray the way some of you 
do — I’d slip away from the faith I have. 
I ’ve come to believe that God wants me 
to thank Him honestly and practically for 
what I’ve got through His mercy and 
grace, and, not continually to wrestle 


44 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


around in the straw to get more. Thomas, 
trust God; you are risen with Christ, 
seek the things which are above — but seek 
them as a man has to, walking right along 
on the ground, climbing every hill that 
puts one nearer heaven, and not howling 
in the valley for Elijah^s chariot of fire 
or the Master’s ascension robes. Howl 
all you want to, you’ll never get them. 
Still, I’ll pray for you ; for God knows I 
love you both.” 

‘‘What did He look like?” said I. 
“You haven’t said anything yet about His 
appearance.” I had no words at that time 
to thank Peter for his thought of me, and 
so reverted to my first question. 

“Well,” said he, somewhat hesita- 
tingly, for he had very little in his well- 
read gospel story with which to make an 
answer, and he was just then confining 
himself pretty close to the Christ we 
knew, not to the memory of his Carpen- 
ter friend of recent days, “He looked like 
the rest of us. John the Baptist didn’t. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 45 

for he kept away from the people and 
thought ’twas the pious thing to look pe- 
culiar. He looked like the rest of us — 
dressed like us, for one thing, wore the 
same sort of clothes that we did. The 
Roman soldiers weren’t fools enough to 
cast lots for garments that they couldn’t 
do anything with — didn’t throw their dice 
just for the fun of the game; wanted 
what he had — the dress of a man, and a 
well-dressed man, too. He acted like the 
rest of us — knew how to laugh and smile 
and get a good deal at times out of life 
as we saw it. He had His wit as well as 
His wisdom ; gave me my name as a sort 
of kindly joke. ‘The word you’ve said,’ 
said He to me when I’d come out flatly 
with my belief that He was the Messiah, 
‘that word is the very Foundation Stone 
on which I’ll build my church. And you 
are a Stone too, Peter — mind that, a 
Stone, not the shifting sand.’ So He 
called me a Stone or a Rock ever after. 
Do you suppose that a man who had 


46 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

never laughed would have been invited to 
a wedding feast? — and to a pretty hilari- 
ous one, too, for they drank up all the 
wine and wanted more, and a man is 
likely to be a pretty liberal provider for 
such an occasion. Do you think they 
would have had John the Baptist there? 
Do you think any other man would have 
been so heartily in accord with the good 
cheer of the home as to start his miracle- 
working then and there ahead of his pre- 
conceived time to show his power? Do 
you suppose that He could take the chil- 
dren up in His arms and not smile at 
them ? Do you think that He could watch 
the children play their games and look 
like a weeping Jeremiah? Do you sup- 
pose that we would have the record that 
He wept at the tomb of Lazarus, if He 
had been crying all the time? I heard 
you quote a word from Isaiah this morn- 
ing in your prayer that has been worked 
to death — ‘the man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief, with no form nor 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 47 

beauty that we should desire Him.’ Those 
words are all right in their place, and 
mean a lot when you get at them from 
the right point of view, but they are over- 
worked. Try this for a while,” said he, 
dryly, ‘‘and see what you make out of it : 
‘He was fairer than all the sons of men.’ 
Granted that He was a man of sorrows; 
when did sorrow make a true man gloomy 
or repulsive? Some of the sweetest and 
most beautiful faces — yes, most manly 
faces — that I have ever seen have been 
those of people who have been ‘minished 
and brought low,’ as David put it, 
‘through oppression, affliction, and 
sorrow.’ ” 

“True,” said I, cordially and yet laugh- 
ing back at him my first question, “but 
what was His face like?” 

“He had a high forehead,” replied the 
old fellow, not to be outdone, “high 
enough to hold a crown of thorns. He 
had a clear eye — for one look from it 
broke my heart; a Jewish face, for the 


48 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

Samaritan woman knew Him for a Jew 
immediately; and grace and glory and a 
gleam of truth, for John once said so. 
That’s all I can say now. We used to 
sing a hymn,” added he, “in the old 
church that put it just right,” and as he 
spoke he lifted his voice to God in glo- 
rious and well-timed praise : 

“ ‘Majestic sweetness sits enthroned 
Upon the Saviour’s brow; 

His head with radiant glories crowned, 

His lips with grace o’erflow.' ” 

“I remember,” said he, suddenly, 
breaking off the hymn after one verse, 
“that the Carpenter used to sing that 
hymn as few could do it. It was his 
favorite. The night they took him for 
murder we had been holding a meeting 
together in one of the little schoolhouses. 

“Peter,” said I, “do you know from 
what you say that I think you look like 
Him?” — glad to stop if I could the sad 
commingling of fact and pathetic fancy. 
“Do you know that you look like the 
Master?” 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


49 


^‘Do I ?’’ said he, back again where we 
wanted him, flushing a bit under the 
roughened skin tanned by the suns and 
storms of years. “Do I? God knows I 
want to!” 

4 


50 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


CHAPTER IV 

I THINK I said a little while ago that 
John had left a city church that he might 
better his appointment. To a certain ex- 
tent this was true. He was ambitious — 
there was no doubt of that — but not un- 
worthily so. He believed that he had 
the right to use his tools where he could 
get the most from a day’s work, and 
where the work — because of its size or 
character — could get the most from him. 
He believed it, and was honest enough 
frankly to assert it. There was, however, 
another reason, though I did not know of 
it for years, or rather did not give to it its 
true importance. In his last church in 
the city there was a man whom he did 
not like and with whom he could not 
easily work. I never knew his name — ^he 
used laughingly to refer to him as Dio- 
trephes. This man was arbitrary and 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 51 

opinionated, a self-constituted expert in 
the diagnosis of Christian experience, a 
Gallio so far as affairs of *'the world” 
were concerned, a healthy, hearty heretic- 
hunter, yet as John said somewhat hesi- 
tatingly — all the more credit to him — ^‘a 
mighty good man.” He could get no 
prominence out in the world among his 
fellows — indeed, he was overwhelmingly 
defeated when he ran for the position of 
assistant doorkeeper in his lodge — yet for 
some inscrutable reason he came to the 
front in the church of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. He came to the front and stayed 
at the front, and welcomed in the front 
ranks time and time again men like him- 
self in caliber, creed, and character. John 
said that he was elected first of all Sun- 
day school superintendent. ‘^It happened,” 
said he, '%at at the annual meeting of 
the board when the election took place 
there were present only four men — four 
men, a goodly number of women, and the 
giggling youth of both sexes from the 


52 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


normal and senior classes of the school. 
One of the men was the old superintend- 
ent, heartily tired of his work and eager 
to decline a reelection ; one the sexton — 
sexton of the church and substitute teach- 
er of the school, sleepy from his day’s toil 
and dusty from his fires, yet fully aware 
of the importance of the meeting — fully 
aware; one the pastor of the church, a 
good enough judge of men, yet no more 
able to make bricks without straw than 
the captives in Egypt — or for that matter 
a Moses without the forty years in Mid- 
ian; and one ‘our dear brother recently 
come among us,’ Diotrephes. The last- 
named brother was put upon the nomi- 
nating committee, overpersuaded by his 
eager associates in the pitiably customary 
way, nominated and unanimously elected 
by the casting vote of the secretary.” 

“You need tell me no more,” said I, 
quietly. “I can follow his path. I had 
his brother in one of my churches. He 
was an English local preacher — all right 


Simon Peter, Fisherman S3 

in England, say forty years ago, but not 
phenomenally a success as a supporter of 
a Yankee preacher. He practically owned 
the church and felt aggrieved — the un- 
godly used a shorter term — when he 
could not control its policy even down to 
the minute details. He knew how to write 
a sermon — so he told the pastor Monday 
morning when he, poor fellow, was sure 
that he himself didn’t — and he had very 
decided views as to the lettering on the 
banner of the Junior Epworth League. It 
was he who loved the pastor to distrac- 
tion for three months or more — up to va- 
cation time; and it was he who told the 
elder quietly on his way home from the 
fourth Quarterly Conference that the peo- 
ple really needed a new man. ‘He’s all 
right as a pastor, so they say, but he 
doesn’t feed us in his pulpit work.’ It 
was he who offered the customary reso- 
lutions at the last meeting of the official 
board — who moved that the picture of 
their beloved pastor be hung in the vestry 


54 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


of the church, and who suggested that 
the ladies present the pastor's wife with a 
bit of silver — ‘sterling, mind you,' said 
he, ‘by all means let it be sterling.' " 

“See here," said John, who seemed 
highly amused at this bit of news, “it 
seems to me that you have had no better 
success than 1. How could you stand it? 
I couldn’t." 

“I didn’t," said 1. “I left before my 
full term was up." 

“But you stayed three years ? One was 
enough for me." 

“Well,” I replied, after a moment’s 
hesitation, “I didn’t believe I would find 
it any better anywhere else. Human na- 
ture is the same everywhere — even sancti- 
fied human nature. I take it you’ll meet 
the same people in- Maine that you meet 

in B . Then, too, sometime in my 

second year it dawned upon me that I 
might be the fellow that was wrong — or, 
at least, that that was a good working 
hypothesis. I remember the time — I was 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 55 

preaching a series of sermons on the thir- 
teenth of Corinthians. Or, granted that 
I wasn't wrong — that my judgment was 
true, that he was a blight upon the church 
— had I and the rest of us a right to leave 
him? It was the meanest Jew in the 
chosen race whom the angel of God 
stayed by the longest. There is a prince 
of God in many a supplanter. My brother 
who deals in capsules and tablets likes a 
hard case. Why shouldn’t I endure the 
foolishness and pettiness and apparent 
meanness of an undeveloped soul with as 
much patience as he dealing with a slug- 
gish liver? I guess, John, there are two 
sides to every story. It might be profit- 
able to hear what Diotrephes had to say 
of you. I’d give a good deal to have 
heard what my English local preacher 
said to my Dutch steward about me, or 
to have heard his reply.” 

I said much more than I had intended 
to say; possibly more than I honestly 
felt. I was seeking to lure Peter into the 


56 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

conversation — to keep him musing till the 
fire burned and he also might speak. 

‘‘Yes/’ said he, emphatically and with 
something of annoyance, “you were most 
decidedly to blame, both of you. It was 
your duty to know how to reach men, yet 
according to your story you have fear- 
fully failed. The Master wouldn’t have 
acted as you have done — even I wouldn’t. 
Why, I wouldn’t have baptized one of the 
three thousand on the day of Pentecost if 
He had given promise of as little tact as 
you have shown.” 

“How did the Master reach you, 
Peter?” John was evidently thinking that 
Peter was a pretty difficult case to handle. 

“I’ll not tell you now,” replied he. 
“Wait till we take breakfast some morn- 
ing down on that bit of beach yonder; 
then I’ll give you my experience. But I 
know that He reached me, and I know 
that He got hold of many others just like 
me. See here, Thomas, you said some- 
thing about a doctor just now. Did you 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 57 

ever call the Master the ^ Great Physi- 
cian’? Did you ever use His text — ‘He 
hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted’ ? 
If so, didn’t you say that no case was too 
peculiar or too difficult for Him — that no 
case need be fatal ?” 

“Yes,” said I, “but that’s His redemp- 
tive work you are talking of now — or, 
better, to keep to your thought. His reme- 
dial work. We are talking of His getting 
hold of the sinner — not of His treatment 
after He has him. I’m not thinking of 
what He could do for Peter, but of how 
He reached Simon.” 

“Well,” said Peter, after a moment’s 
thought, all of his temper now gone, “for 
one thing He didn’t try to do it all Him- 
self, the way you do. He made use of 
the rest of us. Why didn’t you use your 
Dutch steward if you wanted to touch 
your local preacher ? It was Andrew who 
found me — and I would do anything for 
him. He was my own brother, as true a 
man as ever lived, with a big brain and 


58 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

a big heart. Some one told me in the 
Bible class — that young fellow home from 
college whom the Carpenter took such a 
liking to — that his name meant the 
‘Manly one,’ and the quiet little woman 
who rarely said anything — the Carpenter 
and I called her ‘Mary’ — said that she 
was glad that it was Manliness personi- 
fied that first followed Christ.” 

“Where was I?” said he, after a pain- 
ful pause — ^John and I had not been quick 
enough to check him. It was fearfully 
sad to see him clutching after the threads 
of the other life. 

“I don’t know,” said I, tamely, though 
I was following him closely enough. 

“John found James,” resumed Peter, 
“Philip found Nathanael, and going back 
to the first two disciples it was John the 
Baptist who found them. Speaking about 
John the Baptist,” said he, after a mo- 
ment, “there was a case for you. Do you 
remember how the Master managed 
him?” 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 59 

“Why, yes,” said John, “I think so. 
There are not many references to him. 
Certainly I know all that yon can possibly 
allude to.” 

“No, you don’t either,” said Peter, 
bluntly, to the quiet delight of both of 
us — the old man was warming again to 
his thought. “There isn’t a finer thing in 
the whole gospel story. You remember 
that John was in prison waiting his 
death; that the only things he could see 
were the prison bars and the stone walls 
of his dungeon ; that he was alone ; that 
he was gloriously innocent; that he had 
been true to his God and his Master from 
first to last. David’s pit isn’t to be named 
alongside of John’s prison. No credit to 
David that he waited patiently for the 
Lord; all honor to John that he waited 
at all, patiently or impatiently. He got 
to doubting — to his glory be it said. He 
never would have done so if he hadn’t be- 
fore that put the Master in the highest 
possible place, and if he had not lived a 


60 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


noble life himself. Jonah didn’t doubt 
God in his prison — no, came to believe in 
Him only when he got there. But he was 
the smallest of the prophets and John the 
greatest of them. Jonah thought he could 
run away from God; John came preach- 
ing in the wilderness — ‘The kingdom of 
God is at hand.’ ” 

“That’s so,” said I, quite tamely — I 
couldn’t fully follow his thought; “John 
did seem to doubt the Master.” 

“Yes,” said Peter, on the right track 
again, “and he frankly told the Master all 
about it. ‘Art thou He that should come, 
or look we for another?’ — came right to 
the point; made no explanation, offered 
no apology. Some of you fellows are 
afraid of offending the Ruler of the uni- 
verse — that’s the chilly term you use — 
and don’t dare to be honest. ‘I’ve begun 
to lose faith in you — to lose faith: I’m 
afraid you are not what you say you are, 
— that’s practically what he told his two 
disciples to say to the Master. By the 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 61 

way,’’ said the old man slyly turning to 
John with that kindly look that gave such 
a beauty to his face, ‘‘did Diotrephes ever 
say anything like that to you? Did your 
Sunday school superintendent ever tell 
you that he thought you were a heretic, 
that you had missed your calling in life, 
that the better people of the church were 
grievously disappointed over your last 
Sunday’s sermon? — that’s the way Sun- 
day school superintendents have. And 
did you stand on your dignity ? Did you 
let the people who overheard — that Com- 
municative Committee of the Ladies’ Aid 
Society waiting to speak to you — did you 
let them know that you were answerable 
to God alone for your belief and conduct 
and not to — to Brother Diotrephes? — 
hard to get the ‘Brother’ out, but you did 
it. Well, if you did, the Master didn’t. 
He seemed to love John all the m.ore. He 
began to preach as He had never preached 
before; at any rate, that sermon was the 
only one He ever referred to, and He 


62 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


seemed to think it the best thing He had 
done that day. ‘Go tell John/ said He, 
‘that Fve healed the sick, cleansed the lep- 
ers, and preached to the poor.^ He went 
through the whole program laid down 
for Him by Isaiah, and He did it imme- 
diately — that very hour. Never since the 
six days of Creation has so much of di- 
vine force been crowded into one hour as 
then; and He did it all to stand by a 
friend in the chill of his doubt. That’s 
not the whole of it, either — nor the best 
of it. He said His kindest words after 
John’s disciples had gone. He didn’t talk 
against Diotrephes behind his back in the 
privacy of the leaders and stewards’ meet- 
ing. ‘Do you folks think John is a fickle 
man?’ said He, as soon as He had sent 
the messengers away. ‘Does it look as if 
the man whom you went out into the 
wilderness to see is like the grass bowing 
under every breeze? Not a bit of it; if 
you think from what you’ve heard that he 
wavers and is easily shaken you are mis- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 63 

taken. He’s no reed. And do you men 
over there think that he was rather 
rough in his question — inconsiderate in 
his doubt, too blunt with Me — that he had 
no right to call Me to account as he did? 
Why, you forget who he is. John’s no 
courtier, trained in guarded and gentle 
speech. His words may seem harsh, but 
his heart is all right.’ Thomas, try that 
method with your next local preacher. It 
paid. John never wavered after that; 
never got out of prison either, but gave 
up his life to go home and welcome 
Stephen.” 

“You said a little while ago,” I replied 
kindly seeking to get him to his main 
thought again, “that the Master did not 
do it all as we do — that He sent Andrew 
after you, and Philip after Nathanael, and 
John the Baptist after Andrew and the 
Beloved Disciple.” 

“Yes, that’s true,” said he, “though I 
never used the words ‘Beloved Disciple’ — 
It was His way very often, though I think 


64 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


I may have made too much of it. It's 
equally certain that He sought men Him- 
self. He was the only one of us who was 
genuinely on the lookout for an opportu- 
nity. It was He who saw Zaccheus up in 
the sycamore tree — and guessed the rea- 
son why he was there. It was He who 
hunted up that blind boy who had been 
cast out of the synagogue because he 
wouldn't curse the only one who had been 
his friend." 

should think Matthew would have 
noticed Zaccheus — both of them were 
publicans," said John. 

“So should I," replied Peter, “but he 
doesn't even mention him ; it was left for 
Luke to do that. Still, what about the 
rest of us not noticing that blind boy? I 
can't see how we could be so careless. 
What a chance to preach the simple Gos- 
pel to a poor sinner with the certainty of 
success! He had been blessed by the 
Master with the gift of sight; he was 
hunting for an explanation of His power ; 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 65 

he had broken with his old associates — 
even his home had been shut against him ; 
he was sad, he was alone. I see it all 
now, but not one of us saw it then. The 
truth of it is, we were busy with questions 
of theology those days, just as you and 
Thomas were the other evening when I 
wanted you to go out on the lake with 
me. ‘Who did sin, this man, or his par- 
ents, that he was born blind? — that was 
what we bothered about. Great question, 
Thomas, great question. God forgive 
me ! Why didn’t I help the blind boy and 
consider the why and the wherefore after- 
ward? We were a poor lot before Pente- 
cost, anyway. It was left for the Master, 
I say, to notice the opportunity. ‘Do you 
believe on the Son of God?’ said He to 
the boy the day after He had healed him. 
‘Who is He that I might believe on Him ?’ 
‘Thou hast both seen Him’ — seen Him — 
new word for that poor fellow — ‘and He 
it is that speaketh to thee.’ No wonder 
that He won him — no wonder that the 
5 


66 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


boy immediately worshiped Him. Did 
you ever wonder why it was that Mary 
Magdalene got so near to the table at 
Simon’s feast? Did you never think it 
peculiar that they didn’t stop her? The 
truth of it is, they didn’t notice her. Not 
one of them saw her till the Master said, 
‘Simon, seest thou this woman ?’ He saw 
her, for He was on the lookout for a 
Heaven-sent opportunity. You’ll never 
do much good with your Dutch stewards, 
or English local preachers, or Diotrephes 
either, till you see your chance far better 
than I guess you ordinarily do.” 

“Still,” said I, “I can’t see that you 
were so much to blame in this last case. 
You had your eyes fixed on the Master. 
You can’t chide a man who sees ‘Jesus 
only.’ Can you?” said I, as he hesitated. 
His back was turned toward me at the 
moment, or I wouldn’t have repeated an 
unfortunate question ; for if I had planned 
to anger the old man I couldn’t have gone 
about it in a more successful way. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 67 

“Jesus only! Jesus only!’’ blurted he. 
“Why do you say that? Who gave you 
the right to see Jesus only when a sinner 
needs your help.” 

As he spoke he looked at me as he did 
on that first day when he said that I didn’t 
act like Thomas. Then he looked at 
John, and in a moment seemed to collect 
himself; looked at me again, sadly this 
time, and then continued : 

“You make me think of a person we 
had to preach for us once. He took for 
his text, “Looking unto Jesus the au- 
thor and finisher of faith.’ That was his 
text — his sermon I don’t remember ; thank 
God, I don’t. All that I can recall is, he 
twisted and turned and browbeat the 
truth till ’twas well-nigh dead. The Car- 
penter and I walked home together. 
Neither of us said much, till just as we 
were parting he spoke: T can’t help it, 
and I don’t want to either. I’ve got to 
keep looking at the other fellow too. You 
can go to that “second blessing” meeting 


68 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


if you want to — I’m going to hunt up 
Jim. God knows he needs some one to 
cheer him, if what you told me about him 
is true. Seems to me that Gadarene 
wanted to go to a second blessing affair, 
but the Master sent him off to tell his 
friends about the first. The difference 
between him and me is, I don’t want to 
go, and what is more I don’t believe that 
I ought. The young fellow had a good 
text, but — .’ Well,” said Peter, ‘T went 
with him. You ought to have heard him 
sing, you ought to have heard him speak, 
you ought to have heard him pray. You 
ought to have seen him ! God knows how 
I loved that man ; God knows how I felt 
when they killed him; and I sometimes 
think if the Master were to come — ” 

He could say no more. John was no- 
where to be seen. It was left for me to'' 
see the darkness settle back upon Peter. 
What had seemed to be sunrise was sun- 
set. It was midnight with him soon 
enough — and in his midnight he slept. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


69 


CHAPTER V 

A FEW days afterward we found our- 
selves face to face with the same topic. 
We had been altogether too sanguine 
regarding Peter’s improvement. The 
“clouds had returned after the rain.” He 
was Peter again sure enough. The lake 
was Galilee, John and I the friends of his 
imaginary life nineteen centuries before; 
the bit of modern speech, the elusive 
memory, the place, the dawning hope, the 
careless reference to the life of the day, 
failed for a time to irritate or even at- 
tract. He either did not hear or did not 
find anything in his poor clouded mind 
that suggested response. This, however, 
we did not know immediately ; so that we 
were startled when first he joined in 
familiar conversation. Neither John nor I 
would pass through another such night 
of pain, or witness again a similar strug- 


70 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

gle between reviving memory and weak- 
ening fancy, for all that the vacation trip 
might give us. 

‘‘It was not the rule of the Master,’’ 
said John, quietly, “to let the devils tear 
a poor fellow before He cast them out, 
and we ought to be careful that this be 
not one of the exceptions.” 

It was Sunday afternoon, a chilly and 
a rainy one, and we were at close quarters 
in camp. The little hut was aglow with 
the light of the crackling blaze in the open 
fireplace, and we were stretched out at 
our ease enjoying the warmth and the 
absolute freedom from responsibility and 
care. John had just shown me for the 
third or fourth time a photograph of his 
wife and little one that he had tramped 
over the “carry” ten miles to the little 
post office to get. It was easy to see that 
his thoughts were not in Galilee, but rath- 
er very decidedly in the “State of Maine.” 
“I don’t deserve the love of such a wom- 
an,” said he, emphatically. “She is well 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 71 

named Mary ; she is surely more like her 
than I am like John. She is a saint on 
earth if there ever was one. Peter, what 
do you think of that for a picture?” It 
was no use for him to appeal to me. He 
had sense enough finally to see that I was 
thinking of some one else. '‘Don’t you 
think I’ve much to thank God for?” 

“I should say you had,” said Peter, 
promptly and heartily. "One could see at 
a glance — even a stranger — that she is a 
good woman; and at a second glance,” 
added he, dryly, "that she is too good for 
you. That much even I can see — ^yes, 
could have seen a few years ago. I’m not 
so dull as I used to be.” 

"What do you mean,” replied John, 
mechanically, smilingly evading Peter’s 
sly thrust. 

"Well, one day the Master,” responded 
the old fisherman — we looked up quickly, 
John somewhat ashamed and I decidedly 
amazed. Peter was at it again and John 
was accountable for it. There was no 


72 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

knowing now what old scar would be re- 
opened or new wound be given. All that 
we could do would be to guide him, if 
possible, or at least keep out of his way. 
‘‘One day the Master,’^ repeated Peter, 
“went to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, 
a few miles beyond the place where you 
got that picture, to get a little rest. He 
was tired out — genuinely used up. He 
couldn^t get any sleep. People kept com- 
ing to Him at all hours, day and night. 
Nicodemus wasn’t the only man who came 
to Him by night — not the only coward 
who wanted the cover of darkness. And 
He received them, every one of them. It 
was good recent history that He repeated 
when He said, ‘Him that cometh unto Me 
I will in no wise cast out’ — good history 
as well as good prophecy. What’s more. 
He had us to look after — a dozen thick- 
headed farmers and fishermen, incapable 
of a large thought or even ordinary sta- 
bility. He told me that He had to pray 
for me; and even then I hadn’t strength 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 73 

enough to stand the ridicule of a servant 
girl. I don’t believe the rest of us were 
any better, except possibly Thomas. John 
was shrewd enough to keep away from 
temptation. There is no knowing what 
would have happened if he had stood by 
the fire, too.” 

It was easy to see that the old man’s 
interpretations of character were some- 
what prejudiced. From the first — or, 
rather, after the first flash of anger — he 
had apparently liked me and disliked 
John. Dislike may be too strong a word 
— distrust may be better. He could place 
me, for he had a simple explanation that 
covered any slip on my part, but John the 
poor old fellow could not understand. 

'^As I was saying, the Master was tired 
out, and in desperation had gone away to 
rest, selecting a place where He wasn’t 
known and where He thought He would 
be undisturbed. But He couldn’t be hid. 
I could have been, so could you; John, 
very easily. I could have gone off a mile 


74 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

or so and no one could have found me. 
I don’t know how long it took even you 
men to get here. There were a thousand 
places where I could have been hidden, 
but not He. For He was bound to keep 
among the people. He wouldn’t put up 
the bar of ordinary secrecy. He carried 
the whole worthless lot of us over there 
with Him, questioning and quarreling 
and boasting all along the way. One 
stone dropped into the lake out there 
would make a ripple even to the shore. 
Drop a dozen at once and you’ll have a 
wave. He couldn’t keep us still. Some 
fellow had to speak. I don’t know who 
it was. I rather think it was the man who 
opened his house to Him. Anyway, I 
couldn’t have blamed him much if he had 
— Old Abraham got it put into the Bible 
for all time that he entertained an angel 
or two! — Maybe it was the poor fellow 
who had just got his sight. You remem- 
ber, don’t you, that our Lord told Bar- 
timeus to 'go his way,’ and that right 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 75 

after that glorious new-found freedom ^he 
followed Jesus in the way’? Well, I 
rather think at times it was one of these 
poor fellows who hung around the Mas- 
ter, though He tried to send them home, 
who gave his testimony to the power of 
Jesus Christ. Then, too, there was the 
woman’s search. What could He do with 
that? Her little girl was sick, and she 
had heard that He was somewhere in the 
neighborhood — He, the only one on God 
Almighty’s footstool who could work a 
cure. If it’s woman’s nature to sweep a 
house to find a ten-cent piece, I guess it’s 
equally true that she will search a town 
to find the Saviour of her child. Don’t 
you think so, John? What about your 
Mary and that baby she’s got against her 
cheek? I think,” continued he, not wait- 
ing for an answer, ‘‘that I was speak- 
ing about seeing the good in people, 
wasn’t I?” 

“Why, yes,” said I, “that picture seems 
to have started that thought.” 


76 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

I looked at John as I spoke. He too 
had noticed that Peter had recovered him- 
self and was back again on the main track 
of his thought without any guidance from 
either one of us. 

‘The Master saw at a glance what she 
was, though he didn't act as if He did. ‘I 
can't help you,' said He. ‘It isn't right 
to take the children's bread and give it 
to dogs.' Fact, that was His word — 
dogs! Strange speech for Him — and to 
a woman, too. So two or three of us 
thought, and yet we were so fearfully 
small that we were glad of it. ‘I can't 
give my bread to dogs.' You should have 
seen the woman when He was speaking. 
She looked dazed at first, then broken- 
hearted, then submissive. ‘That's so. 
Sir,' said she, ‘the dogs have the crumbs : 
that's all they have a right to get. I sup- 
pose I've had my share already.' Say, 
Thomas — Thomas — that was too much 
for me; even Judas twisted a bit under 
that. ‘I've had the crumbs; I can't ask 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 77 

for bread/ That was all that she said. 
But it wasn’t all the Master said — not a 
bit of it! He gave her one big-hearted 
look, and told her to get right away home, 
and she’d find her daughter well again. 
In one moment He had broken all of His 
foreordained plans for a limited atone- 
ment because of the patient loyalty of one 
poor woman. She was content to take a 
crumb if He said so, and He gave her a 
loaf. Then as she went her way He said 
to the rest of us, gaping at the whole 
thing in wide-open astonishment, T 
haven’t seen such faith, no, not in 
Israel.’ Since that time I have learned 
to read character — not by the dress, nor 
Jewish cast of features, nor by anything 
I can name — and I don’t often make a 
mistake. Is it any wonder, then, that He 
knew how to reach people? By the way, 
isn’t that what we were talking about the 
other day? Wasn’t I saying something 
about the habits of the Master?” 

'T think so,” said I, hesitatingly, fear- 


78 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


ful that I might overdo my curiosity 
again. “I believe that you said that 
the Master always saw His opportunity 
where the rest of us so frequently fail.’’ 

‘‘Yes,” replied Peter, back where we 
wanted him and with no suggestion of 
overexcitement — “He knew how to read 
human nature. He saw a man as he was ; 
and He always saw a man at his best, 
too. Take the case of Zaccheus. Zac- 
;cheus was a publican, a miserable tax 
collector, an assessor, too. Besides, he was 
a sinner. Yet Jesus saw something in 
him that led Him to say, ‘He also is a 
Son of Abraham.’ Take that poor Gali- 
lean whose son was sick — I mean the one 
we met at the foot of the Holy Mount. 
The poor fellow wanted to believe, but he 
couldn’t. If he could, he knew that his 
son would be cured in a moment; if he 
could not, he had no reason to look for 
any kind of a blessing. What did the 
Master do? He took the man at his 
prayer, not his profession. He saw just 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 79 

what the man wanted to be, and that was 
imputed to him for character. Old Solo- 
mon had it right when he said, ‘As a man 
thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ No won- 
der He draws all men unto Him. Thanks 
to His name! 

“Then, too, He was mighty quick 
about it. Take this Galilean’s prayer. 
There are only three or four words in it, 
but it did the work. It was long enough 
for Him to see the heart beneath it. It 
was only a scarlet thread that was needed 
to reveal to the spies the home and heart 
of Rahab. I guess the Lord Jesus Christ 
is as quick to see as those poor fellows 
who blew the rams’ horns. All of the 
prayers that are good for anything are 
short ones. Look at the prayer of the 
publican, ‘God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner,’ or that prayer I prayed when I lost 
my footing out on this lake, ‘Lord, save 
me, or I perish,’ or the prayer of the 
prodigal, ‘I am not worthy to be called 
thy son; make me as one of thy hired 


80 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


servants/ That was the prayer he planned 
to say, but even that was too long, for 
the father broke in right in the midst of 
it; he wouldn’t let him say anything 
about being a ‘hired servant.’ Somehow 
or other that sort of petition is always 
out of place for one of the sons of God. 
All that the poor father wanted was to 
know that his boy was sorry — and it 
doesn’t take many words to let that be 
known.” 

“What you say is all true,” said I, 
guardedly, “but it doesn’t fully answer 
my question about our Lord’s method of 
dealing with men. You say that He saw 
His opportunity and saw it right off, but 
you don’t tell us how He used His 
opportunity.” 

“I know what you mean,” replied Pe- 
ter. “I have seen it all along, but I can’t 
keep to my text as you fellows do. But 
give me time. Have as much patience in 
catching my thought, will you, as you 
showed in landing that trout the other 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 81 

day. If there ever was a man of tact or 
rare common sense, it was the Master. 
He saw the fish, He saw His chance, and 
He knew what bait to use.’’ 

‘‘So He varied His method, did He?” 

“Of course,” replied Peter, chafing a 
bit at my interruption. “For one thing. 
He never pestered the life out of the fel- 
low He was talking with.” 

It was John’s turn now to glance warn- 
ingly at me, and my turn to withdraw as 
gracefully as I could. 

“All right, Peter, I beg your pardon. 
Go ahead in your own way. I guess I 
was too eager ; that’s all.” 

“He won Zaccheus,” continued Peter, 
perfectly mollified, “by letting him show 
Him a favor — by receiving rather than 
giving. He broke my heart by a look ; a 
word would have brought an answer, I 
guess, for I was in a swearing mood just 
then. He rebuked me by making me 
promise loyalty to Him three times run- 
ning. He won Mary by His gentle cour- 
6 


82 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


tesy. Of course she didn’t plan to wash 
His feet with her tears, any more than 
Simon planned to wash them at all. Yet 
He assumed that she did. So, Mary of 
Bethany. She had no thought of anoint- 
ing Him for His burial. They wouldn’t 
have given Him a feast if they had had 
any idea of His death. The two things 
don’t go together. All that Mary in- 
itended to do was to imitate what the 
other Mary had done. I guess she meant 
to show to her Lord that Mary His friend 
in the home at Bethany could do as much 
for Him as Mary the sinner in the home 
of Simon the Pharisee. That seems to 
me to be good sense, though I never heard 
Him say anything about it. 

^^He never took anyone at a disadvan- 
tage. That’s why He wrote on the 
ground that day when the sinning wom- 
an was brought before Him. He gave 
her time to collect herself before He 
spoke to her; and her accusers took ad- 
vantage of it. If it hadn’t been for her 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 83 

those old hypocrites wouldn’t have gotten 
off so easily — so I think. He was a 
hard hitter at times” — and the old man 
chuckled as he said it as if he were glad 
of it — ‘^a hard hitter. ‘Generation of 
vipers. Sons of the devil! Whited sepul- 
chers I Liars !’ He could use plain speech 
when He wanted to do so. I’m mighty 
glad He did. Seems wrong to hate the 
devil whom you’ve not seen, and not hate 
the devil whom you see.” 

“Shouldn’t you love your enemies?” 
said I, quite tamely. I saw that he looked 
for some sort of reply. 

• “Yes,” said the old man, “that’s the 
aim. Still I thought of what John once 
said about love; and IVe found that a 
man can’t love much if he can’t hate too. 
Yet,” said he, quickly, gladly recovering 
his old position, “He could say things that 
I couldn’t; for He knew what He was 
talking about. If He called a man a 
hypocrite it was because he was one; if 
I do, the chances are that I have made a 


84 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


mistake. But I won’t say any more about 
this now. I guess I’ve said too much as 
it is. The Master never took a man at a 
disadvantage, nor let one take himself at 
a disadvantage either. He always sided 
with a man’s better nature against his 
poorer. He always helped Peter in his 
fight with Simon,” said he, smiling 
gently. “Do you remember how He stood 
by Mary at the tomb of Lazarus? You 
recall that He said to her, T am the resur- 
rection and the life,’ and that He added, 
^Believest thou this?’ You remember 
that she tried to answer but couldn’t?” 

“Why, no,” said John. 

“Well,” said Peter, “that’s the case, 
just the same. Wea, Lord,’ said Mary, T 
believe that thou art the Christ.’ She 
couldn’t say more than that, though she 
mightily wanted to do so. He never 
stood in the way of a friend. Do you re- 
member why He came to leave Judea? 

“Because of John the Baptist?” 

“Yes,” said Peter, with some sur- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 85 

prise — he had not found me as a rule 
ready with an answer — “Yes, when the 
Lord found that the Pharisees were say- 
ing that He was baptizing more disciples 
than John He took Himself out of the 
way. It was all right enough for John 
to talk about his decreasing while the 
Master increased — the Master had some- 
thing to say about that, too. 

“Wait a minute,’' said he to John, “a 
word more. He never saved Himself — 
never preached only once on Sunday for 
fear He might die fifteen minutes before 
His time if He preached twice. He gave, 
gave, gave all the time. Paul meant right 
when he said, ‘He pleased not Himself,’ 
but he overlooked the word of Christ, 
‘It’s more blessed to give than to receive.’ 
If that is true — and I know ’tis — He 
wasn’t the Man of Sorrows only — but the 
Man of Holy Happiness.” 

Involuntarily, John moved again; the 
old man saw him, but adroitly threw upon 
us the burden of the length of the conver- 


86 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


sation. ‘‘He would have talked with you 
men as long as you wanted Him to do 
so — and that is saying a good deal. I’m 
getting tired.” 

“Peter,” said I, laughingly, “we can 
take a gentle hint as kindly as you give 
it. You men go to bed. I’ll fix the fire 
for the night. Don’t you bother about 
breakfast, John, it’s my turn. Good 
night.” 

In a few moments both of them were 
sound asleep ; and after a word of prayer 
and a song of thanksgiving out under the 
stars — for the storm had ceased — I fol- 
lowed them, and a memorable day was 
ended. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


87 


CHAPTER VI 

‘‘So you would be willing to change 
places with him, would you? — be glad to 

live in Galilee rather than B ; to 

catch fish instead of men; to mend nets, 
to build huts, and dream of days you 
never knew?’’ 

“Quite likely,” said I, “just about as 
much as you would. You’re too fast, 
John. You jump at conclusions too 
quickly. Do you think I’d be taking this 
long tramp if I were absolutely daft. I 
rather guess there is something of the 
modern in me still. No! No! I’m as 
eager to get a letter from home and to 
hear from the church I’ve left as I would 
be if I’d never seen Galilee — maybe more 
so. I’m as eager to get my mail as you 
were to get that photograph you showed 
me yesterday, and that’s saying a good 
deal.” 


88 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


“I suppose so,’’ said John, laughingly; 
^‘still I can’t see what you find to joke 
about in an old married man’s looking 
at the picture of his wife.” 

‘‘Nor I — that is, not now. I hope to 
get one of mine.” 

We entered the little post office as we 
spoke and made inquiries for our mail, 
and in a moment found ample payment 
for a walk of ten miles. True, I didn’t 
receive any picture, but I did get news of 
the good health of my loved ones and the 
prayers and good wishes of a loyal 
church; and I got it in the loving let- 
ter of my wife. Besides, inclosed in her 
letter I found a little scrawl from one of 
the children — his first attempt at letter 
writing — with its misspelled words, its 
grave information that he had bumped 
his head, or that baby had cut another 
tooth, its blot for a kiss (a blot first, the 
thought of the kiss afterward: I could 
see it all — the tears, the chubby fists dig- 
ging at the fountain of ready supply, the 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 89 

kiss of the mother and the pious bit of 
domestic diplomacy) — I say I found 
ample payment for the ten miles’ tramp 
over the hills. So did John. He, too, 
had heard again from home. ‘^Lucky 
woman,” thought I, as I saw him read 
his letter from Mary, ^‘to have that man 
for a husband — the personification of 
manly purity or pure manliness, I could 
not tell which; a man in face and form 
and unconscious carriage, and a saint in 
the eyes that knew no guile and the smile 
that bade the soul flush the face with 
grace and glory.” 

We said very little for the first mile or 
so of the journey back to camp; indeed, 
I don’t think that I would have spoken 
at all if John had not taken up the con- 
versation of the morning where we had 
left it. 

‘‘You’re all right,” said he. “There’s 
no danger. Insanity isn’t contagious. 
Even if it were, I guess you’ve got your 
preventive. How many pages did she 


90 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


write you this time? Have you com- 
mitted them to memory already? Wake 
up, old fellow. You forget who you are. 
You are not the fond lover, nor the 
reverend doctor of divinity. You are 
Thomas. See that road ? That’s the bor- 
der of Tyre and Sidon. That little vil- 
lage across the valley? That’s Cana. 
Your humble servant? He’s John. He 
looks amazingly like a country dominie, 
but he isn’t. He’s John. O Thomas, 
Thomas, that letter did me a heap of 
good,” and he beamed upon me as he 
spoke even as my little boy smiles up 
into the face of his mother. 

^‘John,” said I, abruptly, ‘T don’t take 
so much stock in that glorious doctrine 
of total depravity as once I did.” 

“What! What’s that!” answered he, 
looking at me quizzically for a moment 
and then pealing out his laughter again 
and again. “Guess you’re crazy, after 
all. Thought ’twas Galilee, but you are 
going back to Paradise — and to Paradise 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 91 

before the fall, too. What started you 
off on that tack?” 

‘‘No matter,” said I, laughing quite as 
heartily in return. “Don’t know as I 
know, for sure. Your face, I guess, and 
my little boy’s letter. There’s a lot of 
good in this old world still. Things 
haven’t gone to everlasting ruin just yet, 
and never will. Old Adam died, and out- 
side of theology stays dead, and I for one 
don’t care to disturb him. He died, but 
the Master lives, and while He lives as- 
serts His power. What’s more, one of 
the first things He did when He came up 
out of the grave was to knock off the 
shackles from poor human nature. My 
little boy is a saint, by the grace of the 
living God, and I reckon you’re sanctified, 
too. Why not give the living a chance in 
our theology as well as the dead. The 
first Adam was a living spirit, the second 
Adam a life-giving one. Poor old 
Peter’s Carpenter wasn’t the Lord Jesus 
Christ back in visible life again, but he 


92 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


very easily might have been so ; and 
Peter, crazy as he is, is lucky to think so. 
No, I don’t mean just that,” I added, as 
John suddenly sobered from his laughter 
to the alertness of the critic — “no, not 
just that — yet I intend to speak to you 
just as freely as I want to — not just that; 
I don’t mean that error is better than 
truth even for a crazy man, but that a 
perverted truth that lives is better than a 
well-proved truth that’s dead. I some- 
times think that the old fisherman got 
more from the humble man who evidently 
knew well the presence and spirit of his 
Lord than many of us from the invisible 
Saviour Himself. By the way, John, that 
is all that I meant to say this morning.” 

“I believe I understand you,” said he, 
quietly. 

“The older I get,” I continued, “the 
more I feel that I need to know Him, and 
to grasp normally and spontaneously and 
tenaciously the fact of His companionship 
and personal interest — not to know more 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 93 

about Him. I’m not yearning just now 
for a series of lectures on the creed. I’ve 
given one or two myself dry enough to 
impair the insurance on my church. But 
to know Him — to believe that He is near 
when I’m digging at a sermon as well as 
when I’m preaching it — when I’m side- 
tracked in the chitchat of empty conversa- 
tion as well as when I’m making a pas- 
toral call that amounts to something. 
That’s what I want. I believe it — yes, 
I believe it; but I want to get a better 
hold upon it. I want to know Him, John, 
know Him: not as the cranks do, nor as 
the spiritual babes — the converts who lec- 
ture hoary-headed saints fifteen minutes 
after they’ve found the Lord; not as the 
pietists know Him, but as men out in the 
world, dusty from its streets, soiled by 
the touch of sin, deafened by its cries 
and groans, wearied by its burdens — as 
such men know Him — as you know Him 
— or, if you will, as Peter knew his coun- 
try Carpenter.” 


94 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


‘‘Well, don’t you ?” said John. 

“No,” I replied, “I do not. Mind you, 
John : one word right here. I take Him 
as my Saviour, and have no doubt that 
He accepts me. That much I mark down 
as sure. Still there is much that I haven’t 
received yet.” 

“Wait a moment,” said I, interrupting 
him in some well-meant words about a 
second blessing. “I am pretty well as- 
sured by this time that the favor of God 
which I seek does not come through be- 
lieving more or believing less, or through 
readjusting in true proportions the va- 
rious tenets of one’s creed. Indeed, I’m 
sure that I am called neither to diagnose, 
nor prescribe, nor tell intelligently the 
next sick man I meet what has been the 
matter; all I have to do is to get before 
God and await His work — provided He 
sees I’m worth it, and thinks I can serve 
Him better as a saint fully insured than 
one seeking such favor. Achan fought 
all right when trying to get into Canaan ; 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


95 


he failed only when he reached the Prom- 
ised Land.” 

‘That last sounds like Peter,” inter- 
rupted John, a kindly smile brightening 
for a moment his face, now quite sober, if 
not sad. 

“I don’t intend,” I concluded, “to crawl 
around in the dust, nor hunt after a foe 
to wrestle with, nor weep for the sake of 
weeping. Yet some of you fellows have 
found something Pd do a lot to get. In 
the meantime, I am going about my busi- 
ness, believing that My Lord goes about 
His too. Pd like to see Him, though, as 
Peter does.” 

“Well, isn’t he helping you?” said 
John, who felt that he had to say 
something. 

“Yes, I never for one moment said 
that He wasn’t, but not” — “I mean,” said 
John, breaking in upon me — “I mean isn’t 
Peter helping you — Peter, not the Mas- 
ter. Do give me credit for what little 
sense I have.” 


96 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

*‘Yes,’’ said I, “y^s, still not as much 
as he helped you” 

“Yet he makes you feel your need, you 
say. Isn’t that a help?” 

“So far, so good; possibly it is a 
greater aid than I have considered it to 
be. It’s true that since I came to Galilee 
my need of a better sight of my Master 
has been intensified, and this strange old 
fisherman is largely responsible for it.” 

“Thank God then for that. ‘Who is 
among you that feareth the Lord, that 
obeyeth the voice of his servant, that 
walketh in darkness and hath no light? 
Let him trust in the name of the Lord, 
and stay upon his God.’ ” 

“Yes,” said I, dryly, “that’s good 
Scripture.” 

I suppose that John saw that he could 
not help me, for he said nothing in reply 
to my ungenerous answer. I saw that I 
had worried him, and I knew that he felt 
he was not equal to the occasion. Very 
frequently, I have found, when a dominie 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 97 

quotes Scripture it’s a confession of men- 
tal weakness, however it may testify to 
his faith or biblical learning. It is in- 
ability and not piety that throws one on 
the word of God, and the man knows it* 
and some of those who hear him know it, 
too. 

We had been resting some time on the 
bank of a little brook when next he spoke. 

‘‘Did I ever tell you about the death 
of my little boy?” said he, quietly, nerv- 
ously crushing a belated wild flower in 
his hand as he looked toward me for an 
answer. “Did I ever tell you what I 
found when I came home from my first 
trip up here in the woods?” 

“You wrote me, you remember,” I 
replied. 

“Yes, I wrote you the bare facts, that 
was all. I believe Mary wrote more fully 
to Martha; you probably saw her letter, 
too.” 

“Yes,” said I, heartily, “you had our 
deepest sympathy and our prayers.” I 
7 


98 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

looked at him wonderingly, not catching 
the clew to his thought, at the same time 
thinking of the little letter I had in my 
pocket — the announcement of the bump, 
the blot, the baby’s tooth. 

After a pause of a minute or two he 
told me the story of the darkness of his 
home all over again — slowly at first, pain- 
fully, piteously, simply, loyally; loyal to 
his friend and loyal to his God, his very 
present help in the time of his trouble. 
He told as at times I had heard he 
preached, in words that had been warmed 
through and through in the very chimney 
corner of his heart. He told it to help 
me, though it hurt him, with an intensity 
that comes to one who feels that he must 
do something, for the occasion is great, 
though he can do but little, and with the 
power of one who talks while the heart 
prays, and who deals with truth that the 
angels of God would give everything to 
handle. Said Peter to me once, “They’d 
swap an archangels’ chorus for a word 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 99 

like that/’ He took of the things of 
Christ as they had touched his heart and 
home, and by the aid of God’s Holy Spirit 
revealed them unto me. 

It is twenty years since that day — 
twenty long years, too. One of those 
years, as I look back upon it, seems to 
have been ten; and one month, a score 
of months. Yet I could recall — as I have 
already done in many other instances — 
all that he said, practically word for word. 
Still, there’s no need that I do so, and I 
have no heart to undertake it. 

^That was the night,” said he, in con- 
clusion, “when I saw my God as never 
before ; and He has never left me, though 
at times I see Him through my tears,” 
added he, with one of those dry sobs that 
hurt so. “Simon Peter helped me, ’tis 
true, when I was with him in his camp, 
but the greater work the Lord Jesus 
Christ did Himself. There’s a spot in 
one of my old homes that I call Peniel, 
for there I saw my God face to face — and 


100 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


lived/’ he added, simply, trying to smile. 
Of course we said very little after that. I 
had much to think about, and John too 
much. 

We found Peter awaiting our return, 
somewhat impatient but hearty with his 
welcome. wondered,” said he, ^Vhat 
had become of you. Don’t you do as the 
others have done. Don’t leave me. I 
need you. Come,” said he, ‘‘your dinner 
is ready.” 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


101 


CHAPTER VII 

“Do you generally speak of the Sa- 
viour as ‘the Shepherd’ ?” said I to Simon 
Peter. I referred to the terms used by 
him in the prayer that was just ended. It 
was evening, the evening following the 
walk over the hills for the mail, and the 
old fisherman had taken his turn in lead- 
ing in the simple worship of the day. 

“No,” said he, somewhat hesitatingly, 
“I don’t know that I do. Still I like to. 
It’s a mighty attractive word.” As he 
spoke he reached for the New Testament, 
the well-worn copy he had used so faith- 
fully for years, and turning to the gospel 
of John read again the lesson of the Good 
Shepherd. It was an old story, familiar 
as its counterpart in the twenty-third 
psalm, and yet I was compelled to listen 
as though I had never heard it. Peter’s 
voice would have held me, if nothing 


102 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

else — a rich full tone, musical as the mur- 
mur of the majestic forest behind us, and 
as suggestive of depth, too; tremulous 
under an emotion that gave a wave to his 
words though it did not break their sur- 
face, as the ocean rolls and swells, it may 
be in the sunlight and when touched 
only by the gentle evening breeze, because 
of yesterday’s storm. I had to listen. In- 
deed, the familiarity of the story was a 
help instead of a hindrance. It made no 
difference if I did know what was com- 
ing, I listened as if to new truth, or rather 
to truth with which I was already partly 
acquainted; for the second meeting with 
a friend is ever more pleasurable than the 
first, the old hymns of the faith, or the 
words of “Common Prayer” sanctified 
by holy usage through the generations, 
dearer every time you meet them even 
down to death. “He that entereth in by 
the door is the shepherd of the sheep,” 
read Peter. “To him the porter openeth. 
. . . A stranger will they not follow, but 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 103 

will flee from him : for they know not 
the voice of strangers.” Then the old 
man prayed again, reverently, but with 
wonderful freedom ; prayed for John, for 
me, for himself; prayed especially for 
the coming of Christ’s kingdom on earth, 
that the God of grace who had called us 
to eternal glory by His Son Jesus Christ 
might make us perfect, stablish, strength- 
en, settle us; that the chief Shepherd 
might hasten His coming and grant to 
each one of us a crown of glory that 
could not fade away; prayed as if he 
knew the mind of Christ, and knew, too, 
the mind of each one of the chosen circle 
that followed Him. 

He ceased as abruptly as he began, and 
turning directly toward me, his fine old 
face still aglow under the inspiration that 
had given form to his prayer, he said: 
‘^Do you know, Thomas, why so many 
men fail to follow the Master? why so 
few join the church? Because,” added 
he, not waiting for my tardy and prob- 


104 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


abiy inappropriate answer, “because of 
your life and mine, or our form of teach- 
ing, life and doctrine, both; yours, too, 
John” — he could not miss the chance to 
show his unfounded petty dislike, about 
the only evidence we would get for days 
that his mind was not right — “because of 
the conduct of all of us. We bring a 
Stranger to the sheepfold, not the Shep- 
herd, and the porter of the human 
heart won’t let him in. He hasn’t the 
shepherd’s rod and staff; he hasn’t the 
shepherd’s manner; he hasn’t the Mas- 
ter’s voice, nor His face, and the hand 
that knocks hasn’t the print of the Roman 
nails. The porter is looking for the 
shepherd, not the hireling. Let the shep- 
herd of the sheep appear, ‘to him the 
porter openeth.’ ‘Thank God,’ say I time 
and time again when I see a stranger sent, 
through your words or mine — for I guess 
we are all alike — even to the very door 
of the sheepfold, ‘Thank God for the por- 
ter at the gate.’ When we present Christ 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 105 

as He is — not as we think He ought to 
be, not as we have seen Him once or 
twice — why, I saw the Master asleep out 
yonder in a storm once, but I talk of a 
Master very decidedly awake — when we 
do that the door of the sinner’s heart will 
be swung wide open. ’Tis the porter’s 
business not only to let the shepherd in, 
but to keep the stranger out.” 

“I tell you, Thomas,” said the old man, 
after a moment’s pause, “the Master 
showed His trust in mankind from the 
first to the last. I know I’ve said this 
before, but now I’m at it I won’t hesitate 
to say it again. He knows the way to 
the heart of each one of us, for He enters 
by the door. He knows His sheep, for 
He calls them by name, and He knows 
there’s something in human nature that’s 
waiting His coming, for He speaks of the 
porter. He believed that there was a 
faithful servant at the door even before 
the shepherd could enter. And I for 
one,” said he, “believe He was right.” 


106 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

'‘So do I, Peter,’’ said I; “with all my 
heart I believe as you do.” And as I 
spoke I thought of the tramp back over 
the hills that afternoon with John, of our 
talk about the dusty dogma of depravity, 
of the theology that clusters all around 
Christ, that throngs him but never 
touches him; of the little fellow who 
had sent his kiss in the letter I carried 
near my heart, and of the baby who had 
sent no word to John — that is, none that 
John knew as such; and of the victory 
early one glorious morning while it was 
yet dark at the new-made grave of Joseph 
of Arimathea, where the Master met Sin 
and the Devil, and all the Devil’s kin, and 
laid them low in a death that knew no 
resurrection. I thought of all this and 
felt that for nineteen hundred years at 
least the porter could be trusted. 

“Now you are back again,” said Peter, 
dryly, a moment or two later, “I’ll repeat 
what I’ve been saying to John. Every 
one of us is naturally a Christian from the 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 107 

day of his birth — a struggling Christian, 
if you will, but a Christian nevertheless — 
fighting the devil from the moment he 
comes in childish grief to ask forgiveness 
of his mother to the last hour of life this 
side the grave — from the first step of his 
baby feet in his father’s home to the last 
one in the solitary journey through the 
valley of the shadow of death. He is ever 
a fighter, sometimes losing and sometimes 
winning, still by nature a soldier in the 
army of the Lord. I have no intention 
of making in my theology the first Adam 
stronger in his power to damn than the 
second in His power to save. When it 
comes to a test between the two, I know 
who wins, and I’m loyal enough to Him 
to believe that the test has been made. 
Goliath had to taunt David to get him 
out of the tent of Saul — not so with Da- 
vid’s greater Son. For Him no invita- 
tion was needed, no cry from the gates 
of hell, to get Him to leap the battlements 
of glory and rush to the rescue. That’s 


108 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

about the way/’ said Peter, with growing 
excitement, “that the Carpenter used to 
put it.” 

“That’s so,” said John, quickly, “I 
agree with both of you. Let me tell you, 
Peter, what I was telling Thomas a little 
while ago.” And the poor fellow to save 
Simon from the shock we dreaded, know- 
ing instinctively that his rising emotion 
must be met by a stronger one equally 
genuine, repeated with painful detail the 
story of the death of his little boy. “That 
little fellow was fit for heaven,” added he. 
“The moment he came into life two stood 
seeking an entrance into his baby heart, 
yet the Master was the only one who got 
in. The truth of it is” — he was speaking 
steadily now — “we are all backsliders 
when we fall into sin.” 

“Yes,” said I, quickly, “and another 
truth is, there are some who never 
backslide.” 

“Yes,” assented John, somewhat tim- 
idly, “though I’d like to take counsel with 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 109 

caution a bit before putting that on pa- 
per. Still I believe it — or, better, I can’t 
say now why I shouldn’t believe it. There 
comes the time when the child sheltered 
in a Christian home and trained in the 
atmosphere of prayer wakes up to the fact 
of what he has been and is — not what he 
may be; that will be the difference be- 
tween your boy’s ^conversion’ and that of 
the drunken loafer, it may be, whom we 
saw to-day down on the clearing. Wait 
a moment, both of you,” continued John, 
‘T must say a word or two more, then 
I’m through. I didn’t get this originally 
out of the Bible, nor from my inherited 
creed, though I believe it to be in both 
now. I got it from my child. Time and 
time again the Master calls a little child 
and sets him right in the center of a 
home — right ‘in the midst of the dis- 
ciples,’ if you please — and through him 
teaches the old lesson of simplicity, ‘Ex- 
cept ye become as little children ye cannot 
enter the kingdom of heaven.’ There 


110 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

were hours when I had to read the book 
of innocent childhood — when I could read 
nothing else. We were together often, 
my little boy and I, and I used to talk 
with him very freely, partly that I might 
hear his quaint little speech and his 
odd ways of putting his thought, and 
partly, after a time, that I might 
learn something. It dawned upon me 
that a little child might lead me. I 
learned among other things what our 
Lord meant when He taught His dis- 
ciples as they prayed to say ‘Our Father.’ 
Fact, I never knew what that word meant 
till one night I heard my little boy call 
me in a troubled dream. I think I learned 
what love was — I’m sure I learned the 
meaning of faith. Indeed, he was a 
whole theological seminary for me,” he 
added, with nervous laughter, in which 
we were glad to join. 

“So,” he continued, after a moment or 
two of thought to see whence he had 
started, “to get back to where we were. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 111 

I learned from him a few lessons in hu- 
man nature. I found out that he was in- 
stinctively good. Mind you, he made his 
many mistakes ; he seemed at times to be 
mischief incarnate. He told me a lie 
once or twice, but he did it ignorantly in 
unbelief, as Paul says. He quarreled 
with his playmates right royally at times, 
but told me once that they all had been 
holding a board meeting. He cried lust- 
ily, he sulked and pouted all too fre- 
quently, yet he was instinctively good — 
or, if you don’t like the word ‘instinct’ ” 
(he misinterpreted my silence: I was 
quiet for other reasons than criticism), 
“the grace of God was with him; or, as 
Peter would tell us, the porter cared for 
the lambs while the shepherd was out 
seeking pasturage. If you don’t accept 
this, how do you account for his sponta- 
neous tenderness, the second kiss at night, 
the flooding of the tears in sympathy 
when his mother hurt herself one day, or 
the sob in remorse such as a well-seasoned 


112 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

saint who slips knows nothing of? Yes, 
indeed, Peter, ‘to him the porter openeth.’ 
Human nature isn’t so wretchedly de- 
praved as we say it is. I think,” con- 
cluded he, “when I get home I’ll preach 
a sermon on The Faithful but Unrecog- 
nized Servant ; or, the Porter of the 
Sheepfold.’ How would that do?” 

“How did it happen, John,” said I, not 
answering his question, “that you didn’t 
speak this way this afternoon? I had no 
idea that we were so nearly agreed.” 

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I think 
I was in no mood for it. ’Twas the first 
time I had opened the door to the nursery 
for months, and I couldn’t easily get back 
to my study. I could have talked about 
my little boy for hours, but I had no 
taste to analyze or group together any 
conclusions I had formed. Still I didn’t 
mean to mislead you” — this last with that 
simple honesty that made all who knew 
him love him for the noble man that he 


was. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 113 

'Teter,’’ said he, suddenly, “Fve been 
telling Thomas how happy I have been 
these years since last we were together — 
how real the Master is to me, how you 
helped me into the light of a great joy — 
and I’ve been praying that he might know 
it, too. Can’t you help me?” 

I am very sure that John did not de- 
serve the treatment that this question 
received — I mean from Peter. I am 
decidedly sure that there was no ingrati- 
tude on my part, or resentment of the 
personal turn the conversation was tak- 
ing. Possibly I was a bit embarrassed, 
but only for a moment, for I had no rea- 
son to conceal anything from either one 
of them. “Can’t you help me? Can’t 
you help me? Seems to me you put that 
the wrong way ! I didn’t know that you 
were managing this affair, Thomas,” said 
he, speaking more quietly, “don’t per- 
suade yourself that John is the only one 
who does any praying up here in Galilee. 
I don’t spend all my time fishing” — and 
8 


114 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

his lip quivered as he said this. ‘‘I need 
no one to tell me of my duty toward you, 
nor my privilege either.’' Then, turning 
away, he said, somewhat testily, ‘‘John, 
what do you want me to pray for?” 

“That Thomas may find Christ,” re- 
plied he, readily and simply — either not 
noticing or paying no heed to his annoy- 
ance — “that he may come to Him as he 
never came before.” 

“I don’t understand you,” said Peter. 
“Who’s to do the coming? It looks from 
your words as if you meant that Thomas 
was to come to Christ.” 

“Why, that’s what I do mean.” 

“Well, you’re wrong. You have twisted 
the whole thing about. I know as well 
as you do that for a while the Master 
used to put it that way — that He said, 
‘Come unto me, all ye that labor, and I 
will give you rest’ — but I also know that 
from the moment He really entered the 
shadow of His cross, from the moment of 
the first promise of the Comforter, up to 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 115 

the present time, the form of His appeal 
has changed. ‘If any man love me,’ said 
He on the night when He was betrayed, 
‘he will keep my words; and my Father 
will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him. And 
when the Comforter is come’ (the old 
man was now speaking even more vig- 
orously, for he was reading from his one 
book), whom I will send unto you 
from the Father, he shall testify of me;’ 
Heaven the place He leaves, your heart 
His destination, Jesus Christ the one in- 
terested, the nature of the Lord His mes- 
sage. There’s your sermon, if you want 
it — ‘whom I will send unto you’ — unto 
you, Thomas, right where you are: you 
needn’t take a step ; your part in the work 
is of another nature. God Almighty is 
not limiting Himself in these days to the 
slow motion of even the best walker 
among us! He moves Himself — even 
David knew centuries ago that He did fly 
upon the wings of the wind. Don’t 


116 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


you bother about going to Him. ‘Behold/ 
said the Master, ‘I stand at the door and 
knock. If any man open unto me, I will 
come in and sup with him, and he with 
me.’ The only steps you have to take 
are to your door; and the average man 
when he thinks that the King is coming 
to see him is not far away from that.” 

“John,” added he, now very kindly, “I 
reckon you must change the form of your 
prayer. I don’t think the words amount 
to much, still they’re good for something, 
and I’d have them right if I could. I’d 
ask the Shepherd to come back once more 
to the sheepfold. I’d tell Him that there 
are many thieves and robbers seeking to 
get in, and the porter is worried and 
wants to turn the care over to the 
Shepherd. I’d say all this to the Shep- 
herd, and I’d say something to Thomas. 
It isn’t the Master only who needs to 
have prayers to move Him — though even 
that I cannot believe to be necessary — it 
is the man who must be sought as well. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 117 

Are you fully ready to open the door, 
Thomas? Well, then wait. Be on the 
watch, and in His own good time He will 
come. He waits till ’tis good grazing 
time before He comes to bring out the 
sheep. He knows when to come. Keep 
still and watch; there’s nothing else you 
can do.” 


118 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


CHAPTER VIII 

It is difficult for me as I recall the 
events of our stay with Peter to place 
every scene in its right setting or give 
the minute details of any conversation. 
It may be possible — nay, too probable — 
that some of Peter’s words as found in 
this record were not his at all, but rather 
my own or John’s. I am sure that I do 
the old fisherman injustice in my failure 
to show him as he really was in his quaint 
originality and positive worth. I do my- 
self equal injustice — without any power 
to correct myself — in presenting him as 
so supremely our teacher. All I intend to 
say is this : his quaint thought was 
strangely timely and suggestive. Many 
of his ideas we afterward worked out to 
limits that he would not have thought 
possible. Also, I do not know that I lived 
so much in the shade those days as I 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 119 

have represented myself to have been. I 
was like the majority of Christian people, 
conscious that I was climbing toward God 
and glory, yet painfully aware of the fact 
that I made slower progress than one 
“called to be a saint’’ should make. My 
aim and my attitude were all right, but 
not my Christian attainment. I never 
had the courage to apply Paul’s figure of 
the stadium and the athlete’s strain to 
anything in my life or my endeavor. In- 
deed, Paul on the Mediterranean in a 
storm with four anchors cast from the 
stern of his ill-fated vessel, waiting for 
day, and at his wit’s end like the rest of 
the company, were it not for the heavenly 
vision granted at midnight, suited my 
case better than Paul at Philippi with 
every weight cast off running the race for 
the prize of the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus. But I loved the Lord. He 
was my Master. I do not think that there 
was any irrational fervor in my words 
when I said so day after day as I 


120 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

preached Christ to the people, and cer- 
tainly no hypocrisy. I am not aware that 
my ecstasy or enthusiasm — for I knew 
even this blessed state at times — ever 
failed to take counsel with good sober 
thought; and I cannot recall that I was 
ever dangerously enamored of a phrase or 
feeling, or appropriated even for a nov- 
elty the rich expression of some other son 
of God as a covering for my weak or dis- 
mal thought. No, I loved the Lord — that 
was sure; yet was well convinced that 
John had gotten more from Him, cer- 
tainly Peter, than I as yet knew. 

So thought I one day as I climbed a 
little hill to the northeast of the lake in 
search of the Master’s secret place of 
prayer. With deep mysteriousness Peter 
had called me aside a few hours before 
and had told me just where I could find it. 
He did not advise me to go — that was 
more than even he would directly sug- 
gest — still his intent was as clear as if he 
had put his thought into words. John 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 121 

had smilingly added, when I told him 
what Peter had done, that evidently the 
old man wanted me to go there alone. So, 
as I have said, I found myself alone, as 
night was entering the valley below me, 
on the spot where Peter firmly believed 
the Master was just after He had fed the 
five thousand. I remember that I was 
asking myself the question whether there 
was any irreverence in my dealing with 
the life of Christ as I had done — whether 
this confounding some unknown carpen- 
ter of some nameless town with the Lord 
of all ages was not even more than a 
crazy man should be allowed to do, to say 
nothing of two men who were supposed 
to be sane as well as saintly. I remem- 
ber that I was struggling with the deli- 
cate question as to the line where familiar 
fellowship ended and culpable irreverence 
began. ^‘Yet,’’ thought I, indignantly 
answering my own criticism, ‘%ere is no 
irreverence in Peter; and as for myself. 
Pm sure I worship the Lord with a deeper 


122 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


sincerity every day I spend in this modern 
Galilee. I seem to be getting reality, and 
that’s what I want. My Lord in modern 
dress, at modern work, with the difficul- 
ties of my own day, and with a love for 
men just like myself — even if I know that 
the Carpenter was a carpenter only and 
Simon a poor beclouded sufferer — my 
Lord as Peter has led me to see Him 
seems more and more a glorious present 
reality. Then,” added I, turning ques- 
tioner again, “why need a man be so fear- 
fully afraid of treating the Redeemer as 
a Friend, with whom, if you will, you’ve 
the right to take liberties? Why should 
he forget that the audacious members of 
the Twelve — the men who spoiled many 
a period in His matchless sermons by 
their clumsy inadvertent questions — who 
rushed in to interrupt both His praise and 
prayer, were the men whom He especially 
favored and loved? Why not assume 
that He loves reality too? Why need I 
bear the name of Thomas and not act as 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 123 

Thomas would act; or, better, why not 
in the spirit of Thomas be myself and 
give words to my audacious doubt and 
preference to any form of fiction or fable 
that brings the Master nearer me? Why 
need I hesitate to get a lesson from a 
Christlike carpenter of my own day who 
in all probability walked pretty near to 
the path the Master would have chosen 
had He humbled Himself to a life of the 
carpenter’s limitations and surroundings 
and imperfect revelation of God’s will? 
Why flush and stammer and bow and 
cross yourself and walk awkwardly as be- 
fore some earthly monarch; or why pore 
over the old pages of the Mosaic law or 
the records of a priesthood of other days 
to find out how to act? Why look upon 
the church as if it were the temple, or the 
temple as if it were not forever in ruins;. 
why forget that the veil was rent in twain 
and the humblest could see the Holy of 
Holies? Why not remember that we are 
the sons of God already in the kingdom ; 


124 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

why not have the sense to know that ’tis 
not the word nor the form, but the heart 
behind it all, that the Master looks at? 
Say anything,’' said I, bluntly, “provided 
you are honest. Drop all forms, or break 
them — it makes no difference. What 
Christ seeks is just that treatment Peter 
now gives to his carpenter, and what the 
day laborer of Maine was to Simon sur- 
named Peter my Master is to be to me. 
May God pardon me my irreverence,” I 
cried, “if indeed it be such, but may He 
also know that it is just now the only 
garment my love can wear with any com- 
fort. I could dress it up in the conven- 
tional clothing of the saint behind the 
chancel rail, yet it would not be such a 
sturdy, manly love as it is in the rougher 
dress of a man among men. O Thou 
Shepherd of the Sheep,” I added, revert- 
ing to the thought of a few days before, 
“enter Thou Thy sheepfold. Find here 
a faithful porter at the gate and a waiting 
flock. I am ready to be led out by Thee, 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 125 

yet dare not venture one step except under 
Thy guidance.” 

It might, I presume, be well for me to 
re-read what I have written and recast 
some of its thought ; yet it is as it should 
be. No man thinks in the method of the 
mathematician with his higher problems, 
or as the preacher who saves his ^‘thirdly” 
for the climax. No man can analyze his 
prayers with any satisfaction or furnish a 
pleasing chart to the curious of the course 
of his thinking. I thought as a worried, 
beclouded, yet loyal man might well have 
thought, and in due season I was not 
disappointed. 

I remember that I turned back from my 
vantage point on a cliff jutting out from 
the foliage that softened the outline of the 
mountain even to its very summit, and 
looked down upon the lake. Well might 
it have been taken for Galilee even by a 
sane man, so far as its appearance was 
concerned. It was remarkably like it in 
size and shape. It nestled in the hills. It 


126 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

reflected as blue a sky; it resented as 
angrily the rough touch of the storm, and 
forgot as capriciously the trust of its 
friends. ‘"Over there,” thought I, ‘‘the 
Master once saw us toiling when the wind 
was contrary, and in the fourth watch of 
the night came walking on the waves; 
down on yonder beach He met the Seven 
in the misty dawn of one of those glorious 
resurrection days of rarest privilege; out 
there Peter walked the shifting sea, reach- 
ing the Master in spite of unparalleled 
difficulties. Right here He prayed” — 
and right there I prayed — yes, prayed the 
whole night through. I do not say that I 
was on my knees all the time, or that I 
put all my thoughts into words — indeed, I 
never could put words into prayer for 
more than a few moments at a time; yet 
I prayed, and in the fourth watch of the 
night as day began to dawn the Master 
came to me. 

I remember that I was looking off to- 
ward the east — on my knees I think I 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 127 

was at the time — waiting for daybreak, 
and repeating over and over again that 
old cry in one of David’s psalms, ^^My 
soul doth wait for God even as they who 
watch for the morning.” I knew very 
well what David meant. I could not for- 
get some of the night watches that I had 
known by the side of those whom I loved 
— how I had sat in the gloomy light of the 
flickering lamp when all the house was 
still, and had listened to the ticking of the 
clock as it marked the wave-beats of the 
fever heat that was consuming the life of 
my dear one. I could not forget how it 
had seemed darkest just before the dawn, 
and how always the dawn had come, no 
matter how he seemed to delay his com- 
ing. “O God,” cried I, ‘‘even so wait I 
for Thee.” 

Then for a time I fell into a reverie; 
probably I slept, and if so my reverie was 
a dream ; but awake or asleep the sentinel 
of my soul slumbered not, and the active 
thought of my waking hours was the ac- 


128 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

tive thought of my dreams. I seemed to 
be walking through the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death; little by little the 
shade grew denser and deeper ; the river 
flowing before me that I was soon to cross 
seemed blacker and wilder; the stars of 
heaven appeared to recall the welcome I 
fancied they had given me one by one, 
and the loneliness well-nigh oppressed me. 
Just then the vision changed. I was back 
in the home of my boyhood. It was Sun- 
day afternoon. I was with my mother, 
and she was with the word of God. She 
was teaching me the twenty-third psalm : 
“ ‘Though I walk through the valley of 
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.' 
Say it, my boy, say it." And I said it. 
“ ‘Though I walk through the valley of 
the shadow of death,' " she repeated, “ ‘I 
will fear no evil: for thou art with me.' 
Say that, too, my boy — ‘Thou art with 
me' — ‘Thou art with me.' " Then the 
two visions seemed to merge in one ; and 
by the river bank where the darkness 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 129 

could be felt, and with the waters already 
chilling me with their deathly touch, I 
shouted triumphantly the words of the 
shepherd boy’s faith, ‘‘ Thou art with me ; 
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,’ ” 
and the day dawned. I looked out on as 
rosy a dawn as ever shone down upon the 
sleeping waters of Galilee, and as I looked 
the ‘^peace of God that passeth all under- 
standing” filled my heart, while I saw the 
face and favor of God as surely as David, 
who ever prayed that the Lord might lift 
upon him the light of His countenance 
and grant him peace. ‘‘The porter has 
had his fidelity rewarded at last,” said I, 
and I laughed as I said it, and the hills 
laughed too — the same little hills, I would 
fain have thought, that clapped their 
hands for joy, as David said, at the pres- 
ence of the Lord. “He found the door; 
He found the porter ready : He called me 
by name; He is leading me out into new 
pastures and a larger life. Indeed, O 
God, Thou art with me.” 

9 


130 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

Singing and laughing and leaping for 
joy, I made my way back to camp, where 
I found Peter up and awaiting me, though 
yet it was very early morning and we had 
no urgent plan for the day. It was not 
for some time that I found that he, too, 
had spent the night in prayer. When I 
spoke to him about it he said : “A friend 
prayed me into the kingdom ; you would 
have done the same, wouldn’t you ? Why 
not I ?” And I could say no more. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


131 


CHAPTER IX 

“Couldn’t you make it clear to him ?” 
said I to John one Sunday evening when 
we were discussing the making of ser- 
mons. “Didn’t he see your point?” 

“No,” said John, “I don’t think that he 
did. He told me afterward that he liked 
it well enough — or some other colorless 
compliment of similar nature ; that I 
seemed to be earnest and sincere but 
somewhat mystical.” 

John was speaking of one of his warm- 
est friends and stanchest supporters, a 
member of his official board — indeed, if 
I mistake not, the treasurer of his church. 
He had told me some time before, in a 
conversation, or possibly in one of his let- 
ters, that he was not a professing Chris- 
tian. “I used to call him Cornelius,” said 
he, “a sort of offset, I guess, to Diotre- 
phes. I couldn’t be hard with one, you 


132 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

know, without being possibly too easy 
with another. For instance,” added he, 
not unwilling to drift lazily away from 
the thought we had started, “I called one 
brother Demas, for good and sufficient 
reasons; so had to nickname another one 
Clement, because of his lonely, not to say 
dogged, fidelity. Mary,” said he, smiling 
a bit as I laughed at his odd way of char- 
acterizing his friends, ‘‘said that I had 
modernized for her the epistles and had 
made them interesting though not highly 
profitable, and wondered why I didn’t do 
the same with the minor prophets; and 
that’s the reason,” said he, dryly, as 
though the suggestion of his wife’s quiet 
wit had just dawned upon him, “why last 
April she persisted in calling me Jonah. 
She must have heard — though I never 
told her — of my plain words with the 
bishop when he wanted to send me to — 
Nineveh. Still, if that’s the only revenge 
she took on me it’s a mild one, hardly like 
her ordinarily wise and womanly adjust- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 133 

ment of rewards and penalties. I guess 
you know she's the head of our house," 
and the loyal old lover paused for a mo- 
ment to smile and laugh at me what he 
hardly wanted to put into words; then, 
catching himself, added with quiet sim- 
plicity, ‘‘She’s worth a score of such fel- 
lows as I am." 

“Was the name Cornelius," said I, 
“any more wisely chosen ?" I saw that it 
was high time for John to be getting back 
home. No matter what the subject, he 
always veered around before long to one 
topic. “I’m talking about Cornelius. Did 
the nickname fit?" 

“Yes," said he, “I should say it did;" 
and then without more ado he began to 
sing the praises of one of those whole- 
souled fellows who too frequently keep 
outside the church, who put to shame 
many of the tall saints on the high seats 
of the synagogue, for whom the Master 
yearns and for whom His church at times 
is in agony in prayer. He told me of his 


134 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

home life, of his business life, of his mod- 
esty, gentleness, and charity. He told 
me how he had cared for his aged mother, 
how he stood by his friends when in 
trouble, how he opend the door of his 
heart to the stranger ; how he loaned his 
money to a brother in the hour of his 
emergency, who when prosperous had 
given to others only too liberally, but 
whom Brother Dives, class leader, trus- 
tee, steward, and saint ex oMcio, was “un- 
able’' to help ; how he had compassion on 
“the ignorant and on them that were out 
of the way and how he was “stern to all 
forms of wrong and oppression ; yet most 
stern toward himself.” Then, taking a 
suggestion from the line he had quoted, 
he went aside from his thought for a mo- 
ment to give me the rest of those noble 
words of Mrs. Kingsley, written to the 
memory of a righteous man, her husband. 
“Yes,^’ said John, “I could use almost 
every word of them by way of tribute to 
Cornelius. He, too, was a man of ‘untar- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 135 

nished honor,’ doyal and chivalrous,’ 
gentle and strong,’ 'modest and humble,’ 
with his highest virtues known only to his 
wife, his children, his servants, and the 
poor.” Then after a moment he spoke of 
his practical liberality, as we style it when 
speaking of money. “He loved our na- 
tion,” said John, “like that other centu- 
rion, and built us a synagogue — for it was 
he who gave most liberally toward our 
new church. He gave to missions and 
never sneered about the heathen at our 
door or about the office expenses of our 
self-sacrificing secretaries ; he gave to the 
freedmen and did not rail at the South 
when doing so; he gave to the worn-out 
preachers without a sly thrust at our par- 
donable improvidence; he gave to the 
Tract Society, and, what is stranger still, 
took with courtesy what the society, or, 
rather, one of its self-constituted agents, 
gave to him — a leaflet thrust into his 
hand by an overzealous worker with the 
title 'Almost, but Lost.’ He worked the 


136 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

mischief with the dry-as-dust theology of 
one of our preachers who lived with him 
as neighbor and helper for three years. 
He made another preach his most memor- 
able and apparently divinely inspired ser- 
mon from the text, ‘Other sheep I have 
which are not of this fold.’ He moved 
another from Sinai to Calvary. He 
bothered the very life out of a student 
who supplied for a summer who thought 
‘he knew it all,’ and who had come with 
his dozen sermons ‘done up,’ as it were, 
with his laundry in his seminary home. 
He induced another to quit preaching at 
his people and go to praying for them; 
and another — ‘your humble servant,’ ” 
added John — “to write a sermon on the 
text, ‘One thing thou lackest,’ that had 
neither force, nor clearness, nor freedom, 
nor the faintest suggestion of sense.” 

“So,” said I, coming back to the ques- 
tion of some time before, “you did not 
make it clear to him? What was the 
matter ?” ^ 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 137 

'Trobably,” said John, humbly and 
simply, ^'because I did not have in my 
own mind any distinction very clearly 
drawn. I remember, for example, that I 
had to read it. I could not for the life 
of me give it from notes. It was a part 
of my class-room theology, I guess — not 
a bit of the truth I had tested or had re- 
tained as gloriously worth the test.’’ 

‘‘No,” said I, “I hardly think that can 
be the reason. Anyway, we have all 
failed at the same place, even the masters 
among us. I remember hearing a great 
man preach at a camp meeting several 
years ago from the text, ‘What lack I 
yet’ — a companion verse to the one you 
struggled with. He made a pitiable fail- 
ure; not because he was not clear, or 
because he did not have any very clearly 
drawn distinctions in mind, but because 
he did not speak the truth. No doubt he 
meant to do so, but he didn’t; and when 
he is older he’ll say the same thing. The 
fact of it is, Christian truth is like the 


138 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


sand upon the seashore, or like the stars 
of the heavens above us — that’s better.” I 
looked up as I spoke to as magnificent a 
view as ever stirred the sublime faith of 
Abraham. ‘'It’s too vast to be taken in; 
too complicated in its manifold relation- 
ship — star with star, planet with planet, 
orbit crossing orbit, as it were — what else, 
I know not; too complicated and too stu- 
pendous for human speech, even if one 
could see it all in its true proportion and 
position. Indeed, the first heaven is high 
enough and grand enough to make a man 
mute, to say nothing of the third heaven. 
‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
hath it entered the heart of man the things 
that God hath in store for those who love 
him.’ Really, John, I think it was to your 
credit that you appeared mystical that 
morning. What do you say, Peter?” 

“I agree with you,” replied he, with 
characteristic decision. He had joined us 
a few moments before, just as we had 
settled down to the one topic that now 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 139 

held our thought. We were again by the 
camp fire, and, as I have said, it was 
night. “I agree with you — that is,'^ he 
added, quickly, “so far as the telling 
others is concerned, and so far as the 
knowing all of truth for one’s self. ‘The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : 
so is every one that is born of the Spirit.’ ” 
“Still,” said the old man, quaintly, 
“I reckon I’d know the wind was blowing. 
I’m pretty certain that I couldn’t tell all 
that the Master might be to others, or 
even a good share of it, or all that He is 
going to be to me; still I can say some- 
thing as to what He is now. If I don’t 
know much about the wind — what started 
it and when it will die away to positive 
calm — I do know enough to say that I 
enjoy my shelter from the storm, and to 
ask even a stranger to come in and share 
it with me.” 

“What do you think Paul meant,” 


140 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

said he, after a moment’s pause, looking 
at me shrewdly, “when he said that right 
at the time when he wanted to learn con- 
cerning his new-found faith ^he conferred 
not with flesh and blood,’ or what does he 
mean by always referring to his conver- 
sion as the time when ‘it pleased God to 
reveal His Son in me’?” 

“Well,” said I, smiling in return, “you 
know I’m a Yankee, too, don’t you? 
I’ll answer your question by asking an- 
other. I guess I know what you are driv- 
ing at. “What did he mean by staying 
only two weeks in Jerusalem with Peter 
and John and three years in Arabia 
alone?’ ” 

“To find out from first sources for him- 
self,” was the ready and acceptable an- 
swer; “to answer for himself the ques- 
tion given to Pilate — the one every one 
of us hears sooner or later, “Sayest thou 
this thing of thyself, or did others tell it 
thee of me?’ Think of the wonderful 
chance Paul had to learn of Christ from 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 141 

the testimony of the Twelve, yet he 
seemed to care little for it. He spent no 
time with them to amount to anything. 
He never wrote to them. He failed to 
quote them or to quote from the same au- 
thorities they used; the best word he 
gives us of Christ, Tt is more blessed to 
give than to receive,^ he got from sources 
that the rest had overlooked. He never 
asks to be remembered to them, not even 
to John when writing to the church in 
Ephesus. The fact is, he kept to himself. 
Still he knew Jesus Christ if ever a man 
did ; and it looks as if he got acquainted 
with Him through the work He wrought 
upon his own life. He’s forever asking 
his converts to take him as an example, a 
sort of pattern of the work that Christ 
could do. I guess he did the same — stood 
away from himself and watched the Lord 
make a saint out of him instead of a sin- 
ner. That’s the reason why he saw so 
much in the Christian life. The rest of 
us looked only at the Saviour ; he looked 


142 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

at the Saviour and the ‘things that ac- 
company salvation^ as well. 

“Take that chapter we read this morn- 
ing — the last one in his letter to the Phi- 
lippians. IPs full of God’s giving — the 
gift of peace that passeth understanding, 
the gift of abundant supply for the hour 
of need, the gift of grace, and the gift of 
strength. Every one of these blessings 
Paul had seen in himself — not in the 
words of Christ, not in Holy Prophecy, 
not in revelation of any sort, but in him- 
self. No wonder that he feels he can do 
anything — ‘through Christ who strength- 
ens him.’ So do I feel,” said the old man, 
exultantly. He had risen and was walk- 
ing up and down before the fire as he 
spoke. “He came to give to me — to give, 
not to take away. He took away my sin, 
my burden, my chance to go to the devil 
without remorse — but He did so because 
He wanted to give. He needed space in 
this old heart of mine, and He had to 
clear some things out that He might put 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 143 

others in. The sun over the hill yonder 
comes to give daylight, but it can't do so 
without taking darkness away. Health 
comes to give color to your cheeks, but it 
can’t do so without taking away the pal- 
lor and gloom you had when you came 
here. The taking away, though, is not 
the main thing, it’s the giving. You and 
I are not to follow Christ so that we may 
learn what self-denial is, but are to deny 
ourselves so that we may follow Him. 
Denial, that so many of us talk about, has 
no good in itself, it is simply the putting 
of one thing out that another may come 
in. If one could happen without the 
other, there would be no denial; but it 
can’t. So when you talk about the work 
of Jesus Christ, I prefer with Paul to 
speak of what He gives rather than what 
He takes away. I remember when I was a 
lad that I had a spell of sickness. The 
home folks didn’t know what the matter 
was, and surely I didn’t. We tried all 
kinds of remedies, and finally went to 


144 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

the doctor. You see I hadn’t been sick 
enough to go to him at first. Indeed, I 
felt ashamed to go when I did, for I 
couldn’t tell him anything except that I 
seemed to have no life. I did my chores 
about the house, kept a fair place in my 
classes at school, but had no life; lived 
on principal, not on interest, as the school- 
master said. Well, I went to see the doc- 
tor, and he gave me some medicine, so 
that in a month or so I was all right 
again. He opened up the chance for me 
to use the powers I had — didn’t give me 
any new ones; put me where I was my- 
self again — myself, no more nor less. I 
couldn’t fly, couldn’t write left-handed, 
couldn’t run on all fours, couldn’t think 
like a man nor act like one; I was a boy 
still and just the sort of boy I had been 
before my sickness. Some way or other 
the medicine had given me the power to 
use the powers I always had. You re- 
member the time the Master healed a poor 
fellow with a withered arm? It was a 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 145 

Sunday, you know, in church. The peo- 
ple who stood by blamed Him in their 
sneaking cowardice because, as they said. 
He was breaking the Sabbath. That made 
Him break it all the more. ‘Stretch out 
your arm,' said He to the sick man, and 
he did so and was well. Remember that, 
don't you? Well, all that He did for that 
man was to give him the chance to use the 
powers he originally had. If he'd been 
a carpenter, he'd be a carpenter again; 
if he'd been a farmer, he’d be a farmer; 
a fisherman, a fisherman — knowing how 
to mend nets, row a boat, set a sail, cast 
a line: knowing how to do so and able 
to do it. He gave him the power to use 
his powers, that's all. He made it so that 
he could drive a blow, lift a load, shield a 
friend, grip and grasp and haul and pull 
and hold — make his muscle do the bid- 
ding of his brain — just as he could and 
just as he did before his sickness laid its 
hold upon him. That's what the Master 
did for me; gave me the chance to be 

lO 


146 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

and do what I wanted to be and do down 
deep in my heart. I had the powers. He 
gave me the chance to use them. God 
gave me my powers at my first birth, and 
the powers to use them at my second. 
David had it right when he said. Thy 
gentleness hath made me great.’ Put that 
alongside of our Lord’s words, ‘Whom 
the Son makes free, he is free indeed,’ 
and you see what a new creation in Christ 
Jesus amounts to — freed from weakness, 
and multiplied and magnified along the 
lines of his original worth. No wonder 
Paul said, ‘I’m not ashamed of the gospel 
of Christ, for it is the power of God unto 
salvation to every one that believeth.’ ” 

Here the old man paused, giving us a 
chance to add a word to his thought if we 
wanted to ; yet we were silent, preferring 
that he follow it out in his own way. 

“I used to know a blind boy,” con- 
tinued he, “who caned chairs for a living. 
His birth was humble, his education the 
simplest, and his outlook in life decidedly 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 147 

sad. One day, however, he met the Lord 
and all was changed. It was in a little 
prayer meeting, and a student, or rather 
a young preacher just sent to us from the 
seminary as our pastor, had given an in- 
vitation to rise for prayers. The blind 
boy took it, and in a moment felt himself 
in the sweep of a new power. Every 
force of good and of Avorth and peculiarly 
his own was set free — so that he came to 
be mighty near what he prayed he might 
be. He went out among the people 
preaching the gospel of a living Redeem- 
er, assured of freedom and favor such as 
the world could never give. Many a time 
have I seen him going about his self- 
appointed pastoral work, carrying home 
a chair he had caned and unconsciously 
framing the message of salvation he was 
going to leave in the next home that 
would open to him; deep in thought, un- 
conscious of his surroundings, led by a 
boy deaf and dumb. Toor material,’ 
thought I, as I saw him and his leader 


148 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

for the first time, ‘out of which to make 
a leader;’ yet God did it.” 

“John,” said Peter, suddenly turning 
with unwonted kindness to the man who 
loved him, “don’t get discouraged because 
the people don’t understand you. Of 
course they can’t. I never could make a 
landsman understand how to take my 
boat across the lake. Years ago I tried 
to tell a man how it happened that two 
boats could go in opposite directions in 
the same wind, but I made a poor case 
of it. The trouble of it was he didn’t 
know a mast from a boom, or a halyard 
from an anchor rope — hardly knew the 
points of the compass. Of course I 
couldn’t tell him how to manage the 
force, or how the wind did what it did, 
but I gave him many a good sail.” 

“Yes,” said Peter, after a moment of 
thought, running back to his point of de- 
parture, “He strengthened me; made me 
more of a man — a man, not an angel nor 
a saint in the heavenly sense.” 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 149 

It had been quite difficult for me for a 
time to follow fully his line of thought. 
All that he said seemed true enough, but 
I could not catch its pertinence. Indeed, 
I do not know now that I have repeated 
every turn in the conversation really es- 
sential to an understanding of his posi- 
tion. As one might readily see, it was 
difficult to report conversations so unpre- 
meditated and informal and unguarded. 
Truth kept company with error, and no 
man was bothered by it. Premises were 
lost and conclusions forsaken, theories ad- 
vanced but not supported. Much was 
said by the attitude, the tone, the temper 
of the speaker — indeed, more than by his 
words. I had said, as you recall, that the 
trouble with John was that he did not tell 
the truth, that unconsciously he tried to 
drive home to the mind of his friend Cor- 
nelius a pious error and have it pass as 
an inspired revelation. John had said 
about the same thing when he admitted 
that he had had no clearly drawn distinc- 


ISO Simon Peter, Fisherman 

tions, and Peter had started with the ad- 
mission of the same fact. He, however, 
as the conversation advanced had modi- 
fied what he had said, and had turned 
away from the main thought to a testi- 
mony of the work of Christ within one 
and not for one. Evidently he meant to 
say that each man was to be led to look 
for God’s work within his own heart, to 
listen to God’s voice in the chambers of 
his own soul, to be led by argument, if 
you will, to a point where he forsakes 
argument and listens to authority, to be 
led by man to a place where he will desert 
man. What was needed was not to carry 
your hearer with you, but to send him 
away from you — provided you send him 
the right way. Then when he hears 
God’s voice and sees God’s method of 
work he will find that he himself is not 
so much a new man as a freed man. 

“He’s a force now,” continued Peter, 
taking up my thought unconsciously, as 
if to confirm my analysis of his thought. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 151 

can do; not I could do, or am going 
to do, or hope to be able to do; I can, I 
can do all things through Christ who 
strengthens me. Well do I remember a 
night in the old church at home when a 
well-intentioned brother magnified ‘dying 
grace.’ It was a pretty dull meeting up 
to that time, for it was summer and the 
preacher was away on his vacation and 
the Carpenter was up at the courthouse. 
The Carpenter and others who were gen- 
erally the life of the meeting were not 
there,” said he, recovering himself. “A 
brother volunteered to kill the meeting, 
or, rather,” said the old man, savagely, 
‘‘to lay out the corpse, and so spoke of 
dying grace. Just then the door opened 
and the Carpenter came in. He had come 
from trials that I may remember to tell 
you of sometime, and with even greater 
trials awaiting him. He was bearing a 
heavy burden and there was no Simon of 
Cyrene standing by. He waited till I had 
finished and then rose and said, ‘Brother 


152 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

Peter has told the truth. My God is a 
help now, a very present help, too; 
therefore I will not fear though the earth 
be removed and though the mountains be 
carried into the midst of the sea.’ Why 
talk of a probable help in the future when 
you may have all that is needed in the 
present? ‘I would have fainted,’ said he, 
'unless I had believed to see the goodness 
of the Lord in the land of the living.’ 

"That’s what he said,” concluded Pe- 
ter, rising as if to cut off the conversation, 
"or that’s about what he said. I can never 
put it the way he did. Then he prayed 
and then he sang, and then,” faltered he, 
falling back through the centuries, "when 
we had sung a hymn we went out into the 
Mount of Olives.” 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


153 


CHAPTER X 

I AM unable to recall any one extended 
conversation with Peter on the subject of 
the temptation of Christ, though I very 
vividly recollect the views he held. They 
were not those entertained — certainly, at 
first — by either John or myself, and I can- 
not say that I fully assent to them now. 
Yet they accord fairly well with what we 
find in Scripture, if not in the Creed, and 
bring the Master very near to His strug- 
gling brethren. Indeed, the nearness of 
Christ was the one thing I saw especially 
in all the teaching of Peter, and I was too 
deeply grounded in the faith and too hap- 
pily conscious of immediate communion 
with God to think that the old fisherman’s 
vagaries had led him to false conclusions. 
Before the loss of his reason — or mental 
balance, possibly I should say, he had 
lived in the warmest, closest friendship 


I 


154 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

with one of “God’s noblemen” — for evi- 
dently Peter’s friend was all of that — and 
at the same time had been peculiarly un- 
der the influence of a simple faith in the 
Saviour of Galilee. He had prized the 
friend at hand, and was studying deeply 
and continuously the life of the One 
whom he wanted to believe to be also at 
hand. It was, then, quite natural for him 
on his partial recovery from his overmas- 
tering grief, mentally unsettled as he con- 
tinued to be, to bring back one picture in- 
stead of two, or to throw around the 
divine Friend glorifying the gospel story 
the human halo of a hero in the humble 
Christ-inspired life of to-day. However 
he had obtained it, I believed that he had 
found the truth, and that the light that 
shone through darkened windows into the 
chamber of his soul was more like God’s 
sunlight than the light that one saint in 
ten thousand of the rest of us would prob- 
ably ever know. Peter’s Master I be- 
lieved to be the true one ; and Peter’s wit- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 155 

ness to His character worthy my respect 
if not my full assent. ^‘Is not this what 
Christ wants?’' said I, time and time 
again. “Does He not seek just the simple 
unstudied intimacy that Peter gives to 
Him ; and may not the Holy Spirit have 
combined the elements of truth in the life 
of the loyal servant of to-day with those 
of everlasting truth in the Master of all 
time?” 

There were, therefore, no topics of any 
size touching the life of Christ that we 
did not ask Peter’s opinion about; and I 
do not recall one conclusion that was not 
well fortified in Scripture and human ex- 
perience. So, as I have said, we did not 
shrink from asking his views as to the 
temptation. I knew very well what some 
of his conclusions would be before I 
sought them. I knew that Jesus of Naza- 
reth was to him a man, a perfect man, 
and consciously no more. I realized very 
well that his endeavor to find in Christ 
an example and friend, to get on an even 


156 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

footing with Him, if you will, where he 
could be sure of sympathy and a mutual 
love, had led him to see the human side 
and to trust that he might in time see the 
divine side of the Redeemer. ‘‘I had to 
find something in Christ,'' said he to me 
at one time, ‘‘that seemed to be real and 
I found it; and while I do not doubt that 
all you say is real too — indeed, I believe 
it is — I can't as yet see it. I can see Him 
as a Perfect Man and get everything out 
of that that I need. In His own good 
time He will show me His Deity as well. 
Till that time I'll work with what I see 
and be quiet with what I believe. He was 
a man and consciously no more." 

I knew, too, the distinction he made be- 
tween conscious knowledge and knowl- 
edge obtained by study, experience, or 
revelation. He steadily insisted that 
Christ lived simply a life of faith; that 
He was shut away from consciousness of 
His exalted position either in the past or 
the present or the future; that He knew 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 157 

what He did because God had told Him 
directly, or because of His study of the 
prophecy and pattern of the coming Mes- 
siah. He made much of the revelations 
that followed the recorded prayers of 
Christ. He said that it stood to reason 
that if Christ went into the Jordan pray- 
ing at the time of His baptism, there to 
hear the words, ‘Thou art my Son in 
whom I am well pleased,’' He had prayed 
to find out who He was and whether He 
had done well so far ; that if He went up 
the Mount of Transfiguration praying 
there to meet Moses and Elias, and to get 
from them a word as to the next step to- 
ward the cross, and to hear from heaven, 
“Thou art my Son in whom I am well 
pleased,” He had prayed for just that 
help ; that if He broke off His conversa- 
tion with the Greeks during one of those 
crowded hours of Passion Week to pray 
as pathetic a prayer as was ever offered — 
“O God, now is my soul troubled; and 
what shall I say? Father, save me from 


158 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

this hour: but for this cause came I to 
this hour. Father, glorify thy name’’ — 
and to hear in response the words, ‘‘I have 
both glorified it, and will glorify it again” 
— it was a prayer to be certified from on 
high that He had made no slip as yet. 
From the beginning to the end He lived a 
life of faith, strengthened by the deepest 
knowledge ever given to one of the plans 
of God as shown in prophecy and type 
and history and human yearning, and for- 
tified at the crisis when His shoulders 
were bending under the burden and His 
brain reeling with the immensity of the 
questions calling for an answer by direct 
revelation. I remember that Peter dared 
to find by holding to this thought an ex- 
planation of the agony in the garden and 
the bitter cry upon the cross. It was faith, 
strengthened, fortified, and at the last 
fearfully tested by the withholding of the 
answer. Nor was Peter left to his own un- 
aided thinking in reaching this conclusion. 
It was largely based on that passage in 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 159 

Hebrews that I have possibly referred to, 
‘‘the author and finisher of our faith.” 
Some one had told^ him that the word 
“our” didn’t belong there ; that the clumsy 
though well-intentioned translators had 
put it there unconsciously to show what 
they didn’t know; that “author and fin- 
isher” meant nothing more nor less than 
“chief example.” “It was easy then,” said 
Peter, “to see the drift of the apostle’s ar- 
gument. Look, if you will, at the great 
heroes of the faith till you get from them 
all the help and inspiration they may give, 
and then just as the race is to be started, 
just as the human arrow is to speed to- 
ward its mark, leave them and look to 
Jesus. Abraham, Moses, Gideon, and the 
others named in that never-fading roster 
of the leaders of the faithful are not to be 
compared with Him. He is preeminently 
the chief example of faith. 

“It was His faith, then, that was tested 
in the terrible temptation in the wilder- 
ness, or rather His loyalty to a life of 


160 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

faith. He had the power to speak a word 
and see, yet chose to live as we have to 
live and as the Father willed that He 
should live, shut away from sight in the 
darkness and seeming denial and terrible 
strain of unquestioning reliance upon 
Him. It is this view only,’’ said Peter, 
‘^that explains the time of the temptation 
as well as the fact and form. ’Tis easy 
to see that the deepest solitude alone could 
satisfy the soul of one who had heard the 
most marvelous message from God : even 
the Saviour needed the chance to collect 
Himself, to readjust the plans of His life, 
calmly to trace the next duty, and to ques- 
tion the truth of what He had heard. He 
had no more right — since He was a man 
with man’s inherited, possibly divinely or- 
dained method of search for truth — to 
take without question such an unparalleled 
announcement of glory and duty as the 
word from Heaven at His baptism than 
one of us would have had. It was, indeed, 
the spirit of the man. His personal traits 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


161 


as well as His temperament inherited from 
a long line of inquiring ancestors, His 
spirit, as well as the Spirit of God, that 
drove Him into the wilderness. 

‘‘So,’’ said Peter, “it is easy to see that 
there was but one temptation, not three; 
three forms of the one, if you will, but 
only one. The struggle of the Master was 
to verify by means at hand the truth of 
the message He had heard, or to verify 
the fact that He had heard such a mes- 
sage, not imagined that He had heard it. 
If He were the Son of God it would be 
easy to speak to the stones at His feet and 
see them turn to bread ; it would be easy 
to verify His position, but to do so by a 
miracle, that would bring Him into the 
realm of sight and away from the plain 
and beaten path of faith to be trodden by 
all the sons of God. Painfully did He 
yearn to know with deeper certainty, but 
to do so by the exercise of the power said 
to be His would be forever to take Him 
away from the life the rest of us have to 

II 


162 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

live. The fact that the suggestion was 
given that He prove His position by 
making bread had some worth, but very 
little. The strength of the temptation was 
found in the desire to satisfy the hunger 
of a troubled, startled soul — not such hun- 
ger as even Elijah in his despondency 
could well endure. The Master had meat 
to eat that the devil and the average com- 
mentator knew not of. He won His vic- 
tory in the decision to live upon the 
strength of the word He had heard — 
rather than on the evidence of the sight 
and taste of divinely created food. 

‘Tt is the same position of mind that 
renders intelligible the form of the second 
struggle. He is taken in spirit into the 
Holy City and placed on a pinnacle of the 
temple, there to work His way to the same 
divinely intended choice — the life of faith, 
not the life of certainty through sight; for 
ever the one great question clamors for an 
answer. ‘Art thou the Son of God, art 
thou? The Son of Mary, the Carpenter 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 163 

of Nazareth, the peasant of obscurity, art 
thou the Christ ? It looks so, but art thou ? 
There are many indications: Prophecy 
pointing through the ever-lessening gloom 
of the past; the peculiar stories of the 
birth at Bethlehem; the power to live 
with no sense of sin, with no deed of error 
in conception or conclusion; the mastery 
of the mission of the Christ as none of the 
teachers have mastered it; and above all 
the word spoken at the baptism. Art 
thou? It looks so, but it may not be. 
Prove it; prove it. See for yourself. 
Cast yourself down from the pinnacle, and 
if you are the Son of God you will be 
kept; and if you are not, you’ll forever 
end this terrible struggle and strain.’ 
Mind you,” said Peter, “this was after 
forty days of testing; after forty days of 
silence, too. The word once spoken — 
‘Thou art my Son’ — was not repeated. 
Possibly He may not have asked for it, yet 
it hardly seems likely; and if He did not, 
one’s prayer is not dependent on the words 


164 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

spoken or not spoken. His whole strug- 
gle was a prayer, yet a prayer for 
forty days practically unanswered. Is it 
strange, then, that He was tempted to risk 
it all by one plunge? His very nobility 
and grandeur necessitated as well as ex- 
plained the pinnacle temptation. He had 
no thought of self-advancement; no care 
to further any aims that were His own. 
He was Courage incarnate. He could 
dare anything; could even set His face 
steadfastly to go toward the deepening 
gloom of the cross; could die with a cry 
of noble perplexity yet majestic fidelity; 
could show the tenderness of infinite love 
even when it looked as if the poorest of 
human love were denied Himself; could 
ever give, give, give, with no thought of 
receiving in return. Other men have stood 
on the pinnacle with something of these 
same thoughts. Why not He? His no- 
bility put Him there, not His pride; for 
pride or the desire to be seen of men had 
no more to do with the pinnacle tempta- 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 165 

tion that hunger with the temptation in 
the wilderness, nor as much. It was to 
see who He was, to see, not to await God’s 
pleasure to reveal and to trust until such 
revelation came. He was tempted to live 
as His brethren could not live, to walk by 
sight and not by faith, to put God to the 
test and get His word in reply that would 
settle all doubt. Gloriously did He an- 
swer : ‘ ’Tis written, Man shall not test 

God.’ I’ve no right to try Him. In His 
own good time and in His own good way 
He’ll let me see my place and duty. Till 
then I’ll go ahead with reliance on His 
word.’ It is easy to see that this unselfish- 
ness, this reckless though glorious aban- 
don of the pinnacle temptation, underlies 
the struggle on the high mountain as well. 
Having dared to think of risking all in 
one form, ’tis easy to think of risking all 
in another. What’s the work of the Son 
of God, anyway? To live for the glory 
of the Father. What is to be done? To 
bring all the world in subjection to Him. 


166 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 


Why not, then, in this uncertainty accom- 
plish all that the Son if successful would 
do — that I might do if I were the son — by 
the surrender of self in one act of worship 
to Satan, and by the loss of one secure 
for God the salvation of all? Why not? 
Simply because the word of God stands in 
the way. ’Tis one’s duty ‘to worship 
God,’ and ’tis written, ‘Him only shalt 
thou serve.’ From the first to the last He 
stood the test and kept His footing in the 
strait and narrow path leading to God.” 

How much of what I have written is 
Peter’s only, I am not now sure; but I 
am certain that the main conclusions and 
general line of argument are his. Time 
and time again he told us that it was the 
only view — this suppression into a life of 
faith — that made the Master live for him ; 
that it was the only view that seemed to 
lend sufficient solemnity to the incarna- 
tion. The element of terrible risk, or the 
sense of such risk in the mind of the Mas- 
ter, was the only thing that could give a 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 167 

strain sufficient to make the Son of God 
the ‘‘Man of Sorrows/’ How could He 
weep or sweat great drops of blood if He 
knew the end from the beginning? How 
could He work out your salvation or mine 
if He were complacently sure of His own? 
How could He help any one of us who 
cannot see one step in advance, if He 
could see the whole shining path for Him- 
self? How could He dare to approach a 
hero of the faith in the Heaven where 
finally all the saints are to meet, and not 
bow before him in deepest humility and 
respect, if He had won His fight at high 
noon while His humbler brother had won 
at midnight? 

With many of these conclusions I knew 
that John was grieved — he never could 
dare a new thought save one of seemingly 
direct revelation. As for myself, I re- 
member that I wondered what I would do 
with the wreckage of some of my 
stock arguments concerning the Saviour’s 
unique position among men ; though when 


168 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

I tried to show them to Peter they did not 
seem to impress him very deeply, or in 
fact to amount to much, after all. I know 
that he heard me with wonderful kind- 
ness though evident perplexity. “Do you 
mean to say,’’ said he, “that you think I 
doubt that Jesus of Nazareth is my divine 
Saviour? Do you mean to say that I 
doubt that He is God; that the Word 
which dwelt among us was in the begin- 
ning with God, in the beginning was God 
Himself?” I dared no answer, and he 
seemed to care for none. “Do you men 
think because I believe that He walked 
this earth a man, struggling and bothered 
like the rest of us, that I doubt that He is 
God? Well, if you do, you don’t know 
me; and if you do, I don’t care to know 
you.” 

“I have to make something out of this 
record,” said the sturdy old fellow as he 
held up his copy of the New Testament, 
worn with such usage as no saint I ever 
knew had ever given it, “and I have to 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 169 

make something that helps me, too; and 
if what I’ve found will hurt me when I 
stand before Him up yonder, I’m sure that 
He will make it all right. At any rate, it 
helps me here.” , 

This last word, I recall, was spoken one 
night as we were setting out from camp 
to see where Peter had walked the sea. It 
was at the old man’s urgent invitation that 
we were going, and we could not well 
refuse. ‘‘Come,” said he, “I’ll show you 
where I reached the Master in spite of 
fearful difficulties.” 


170 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


CHAPTER XI 

It was with something of a feeling of 
awe that we noticed just before the dawn 
the signs of a gathering storm. For 
hours we had been upon the lake, having 
set out from camp a little past midnight. 
The conversation of the evening in the 
pleasurable warmth of the camp fire, and 
the tardy rising of the moon whose light 
we waited, had delayed us. Still, as we 
had no task for the following day, we 
could be reckless in our use of the hours 
of the night; or, better, we could afford 
to yield to every whim of our strange 
guide who hoped to bring us back to shore 
some time during the “fourth watch” of 
the night. 

Peter at first had said very little. He 
had seemed to be more than ordinarily 
perplexed. Our failure to recall the scene 
of the night he was about to describe — 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 171 

or, rather, the impersonal way in which 
we spoke of it and the questions we had 
asked him — was more than he could bear. 
He was ready enough to revisit with John 
and Thomas the spot where each had en- 
joyed a common experience, but not to 
assume that the experience had been his 
alone. Little by little, however, he had 
settled back into his customary cheer and 
good fellowship. 

*^Of course I reached the side of 
Christ,'’ said he, simply. ‘‘How could I 
help it ? I had faith — and a lot of it, too. 
It took me off the seat and out of the boat, 
anyway. It gave me a good start. It 
carried me out that far, at least” — and the 
old man pointed as he spoke to a spot a 
dozen steps or so away from where we 
were. “You don't suppose,'' said he, 
looking at each one of us quickly, as if to 
catch us off our guard, “that I sank right 
down here, do you ? Hadn't I walked far 
enough to get within reach of Christ? 
Don't tell me,'' added he, hastily, though 


172 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

neither of us had any thought of inter- 
rupting him, ‘%at He blamed me for my 
little faith/ He did nothing of the kind 
— or not as you mean it. Twasn't my 
lack of faith in Him that He rebuked, but 
my little confidence in the teaching of my 
own experience. Think of it ! I’d walked 
a dozen steps or so — had heard the ring 
of the sea under my feet, had tested it and 
found ’twas solid — and then had lost my 
nerve. No! He honored and loved me 
for my faith in Him, but blamed me for 
my lack of faith in myself. The man 
who can go nine steps has no right to 
think that he can’t go a tenth, too. If it 
was little faith in Him that He was re- 
buking, why didn’t He say something to 
the rest of you who hadn’t dared to quit 
your seats? Then, too,” added he, as if 
he were trying to persuade himself of the 
truth of his own explanation, “when was 
it ever the habit of the Master to take 
notice of the one failure of a friend rather 
than the many victories. Not a bit of it. I 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 173 

had faith in Him. So far as His rebuke 
for my little faith in myself is concerned 
He was ever doing that/' added he, good- 
humoredly. was ever a sort of object 
lesson to the rest of you. Don't forget, 
either, that I came at His invitation. ‘If 
it be Thou,' said I, ‘bid me come unto 
Thee on the water,' and He said ‘Come.' 
Of course, I say, I reached Him. Let a 
man but hear the voice of Jesus bidding 
him come, and obey it, even if the path 
be as rough as the stormy sea and as un- 
certain as the fickle water — even if his 
faith fail him — yes, his faith in the Mas- 
ter, too, as well as his confidence in him- 
self — even if he begin to sink and think 
that he is about to perish — he will reach 
Him. He'd given me an invitation ! Pos- 
sibly I was rash to ask for it, but I'd got 
it. Even if I hadn't," added he, catching 
an inspiration from the sympathetic face 
of John, “He would have stood by me." 

“There is one thing more that many of 
us seem to forget," said he, looking as he 


174 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

spoke out toward the spot where he said 
he sank, ^‘and an important thing, too. I 
wasn’t the only one walking the sea. The 
Master was coming toward me just as 
surely as I was going toward Him. The 
desire to meet was not all on one side. I 
wasn’t the only one in a hurry. ‘Ye have 
not chosen me,’ said the Master at one 
time, ‘but I have chosen you.’ Say,” said 
Peter, turning toward me impulsively, 
“suppose He’d been a hundred yards away 
when He’d given the invitation, and sup- 
pose I’d walked only half a dozen steps — 
do you think I’d have reached Him ?” He 
gave me no chance to answer, for he 
broke out into one of the most unexpected 
and yet contagious peals of laughter that 
I had ever heard. The idea that the Mas- 
ter needed time to get to the side of a 
true-hearted friend, obedient to His call 
and pluckily doing a hard deed in the 
spirit of faith in Him, seemed to Peter to 
be positively ridiculous. “Don’t you for- 
get, Thomas, the next time you go up the 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 175 

mountain side to pray and to meet your 
God face to face, that He has come a long 
distance to meet you, and that He can 
cover the distance from Heaven to earth 
more quickly than you can go from the 
camp to the hillside,’"' and then he laughed 
again, with more faith in his peals of un- 
controllable merriment than the most of 
us place in the most stately and dignified 
praise. 

So for an hour or more the old man 
told his experience and quietly and lov- 
ingly taught his lessons. Some of his in- 
terpretations of Scripture story, as I write 
them to-day, seem to have simply the 
merit of novelty — if indeed that be a 
merit; others, the most of them, seem to 
have been worthy the further study that 
John and I afterward gave them. It is 
certain that he made the scene and the 
lesson of that night wonderfully helpful. 
‘‘Don’t worry about your difficulties,” said 
he, kindly, more as a father would talk 
to his sons than as a companion, “I mean 


176 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

your difficulties on the way toward Christ 
or Truth, or fulfillment of duty, or abun- 
dant life here, or triumphant life here- 
after ; you’ll reach what you seek if you’re 
honest and have His word that you’re on 
the right track.' The greatest difficulty 
of all,” concluded he at last, taking note 
of our anxiety over the coming storm, ‘‘is 
to get up off your seat, not to walk the 
water.” 

For some time, as I have said, I had 
noticed the ominous anger of the gather- 
ing clouds, though not with fear or dis- 
appointment. Indeed, I was doing my 
best to imagine that I was on the Sea of 
Galilee in very truth ; that I was Thomas 
in fact, a peasant of primitive days natu- 
rally of small aims and limited experience, 
not a preacher of more complex life and 
outlook; and so hailed most gladly any 
additional help that could make my fancy 
real. A lake untouched by a storm cer- 
tainly could not pass for the Sea of Gali- 
lee. Still, the storm had to be guarded 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 177 

against, and I was not sorry when Peter 
saw the cause of our uneasiness. 

Very quickly the storm broke upon us. 
Cloud after cloud came rolling over the 
summit of the hills to the northeast of 
the lake, as if pushed forward by an un- 
seen force from some dark cavern just 
beyond our limited horizon, sweeping 
away vindictively, so it seemed, the glory 
of the night. One by one the stars sank 
sadly out of sight, and little by little the 
moon withdrew her welcome and her 
cheer. Spitefully, but none the less per- 
fectly, the preparations for the descent 
of the Spirit of the air were carried for- 
ward. Soon we heard his voice angrily 
howling his commands to the sleeping 
shallows by the shore not as quick to do 
his bidding as the deeper waters out to- 
ward the center; soon we saw him, as it 
were, thrash with unjustifiable fury the 
waves about our little boat, already doing 
their best to resent our lingering any 
longer with them in safety. In very truth 
12 


178 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


the ‘Vinds were boisterous.’’ Never did 
tyrant conscious of the dawn of a long- 
looked-for opportunity, and angered by 
his delay beyond all reason, handle his 
helpless victim with greater rudeness than 
did the stranger Spirit which swept down 
from the hills handle us. 

All this we noticed while actively at 
work. We were really in no little danger, 
though not one of us seemed to have any 
concern. Our boat was but a plaything 
in the hands of the storm, and we were 
not much better. We managed to keep 
afloat, though the opening of a seam un- 
der one of the thwarts let in the water 
more rapidly than one of us could bail 
it out. Peter, therefore, was the only one 
free to take the oars, though one man 
could make but little, if any, headway 
against the storm. I caught a glimpse of 
his face during one of the lightning flashes 
that now came fast and furious. It was 
singularly calm and strangely expectant. 
It was evident that he needed no stimulus 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 179 

to give vigor to his imagination. I knew 
what he looked for, for even I gazed out 
over the surface of the waters in involun- 
tary search of a familiar form, even I 
fancied that I saw a spirit, and wondered 
why Peter did not call out to it. How 
long the storm lasted I do not know, but 
long enough to give me ever afterward a 
wholesome respect for fresh-water fury, 
and long enough, too, for the fourth 
watch of the night to wear away into the 
morning. When the day began to dawn 
we found that we were nearer shore than 
we had supposed, and that two of us could 
probably drive the boat to land before the 
water could so gain upon us as to sink 
us. So it happened that I was at the oars 
aiding Peter, and that John was the only 
one facing the shore, and the first one to 
see the Carpenter. 

The parallel so far is sufficiently 
strange to allow me to note a few 
points of dissimilarity between the old 
and ever-to^be-loved record of the gos- 


180 Simon Peter, Fisherman 


pels and my own peculiar story. I have 
not cared, I ought to say right here, to 
call attention to many of the differences : 
indeed, I have tried, as one might readily 
understand, not to see them, and I doubt 
if ever man had such remarkable help in 
a similar endeavor as I had. 

The man who stood on the shore in 
no way resembled the Carpenter of Naza- 
reth of centuries ago. He was fully sixty 
years of age and looked even older. He 
had not kindled a fire on the beach as the 
Master had done, nor had he called out 
to find if we had caught any fish. He 
simply stood there watching us, evidently 
ready to offer any help within his power, 
if the chance should offer. He said noth- 
ing till John called attention to him, and 
then only some word of cheer and simple 
greeting. Strange to say, I do not think 
that Peter heard him at first, for he kept 
sturdily bending to the oars driving our 
little boat more and more surely toward 
a place of safety. It was only when his 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 181 

name was spoken, not the name he had 
given himself but the name once familiar 
in the misty past, that he was startled to 
a sense of a crisis in his pathetic, monot- 
onous life. He trembled from head to 
foot. Agony, hope, fear, love — all the 
great passions of the human soul save 
anger and the sufferings of sin, sent their 
varied light to his face in almost instanta- 
neous succession. He dropped his oars, 
fell to his knees, groaned as does one 
arousing from a troubled dream, cast 
questioning, pathetic glances toward John 
and me, and then threw himself into the 
shallow water and surged forward to the 
shore. 

John and I had no chance to pay close 
heed to the greeting that followed. I do 
not think that much was said by either of 
them ; I am sure that there was but little 
demonstration of feeling, or rather little 
in the conventional way. They tarried a 
few moments, Peter simply looking at his 
old friend, and the Carpenter quietly in- 


182 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

tent on our efforts to bring our sinking 
boat to land. When we touched the shore 
both of them were moving slowly away 
deep in conversation. 

That night we were aroused, John and 
I, by the Carpenter, who had been sleep- 
ing by the side of Peter, to give what 
turned out to be most timely help. The 
poor old fisherman was burning with fe- 
ver, tossing and moaning in unmistakable 
delirium. He was living once more in 
the first century, more really apparently 
than at any time since we had met him. 
He failed to recognize any one of us, even 
the Carpenter. He was evidently fear- 
fully worried, for the poor troubled brain 
was dealing with questions that he could 
not possibly answer. At times he seemed 
to be sinking under the waters of Galilee, 
at times to be struggling with Malchus in 
the Garden of Gethsemane; at times it 
looked as if he were suffering as near as 
a guiltless soul could Peter’s remorse for 
the denial. He would weep bitterly, and 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 183 

then break forth with the cry, ^‘Thou 
knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I 
love Thee/’ 

It was several hours before John re- 
turned with the doctor. In the meantime, 
however, the Carpenter and I had not 
been idle. We had made him a good bed, 
had taken off his clothes still damp with 
the drenching of the storm of the pre- 
vious night, and had given from our 
simple medicine chest repeated doses of 
some standard remedy for the reduction 
of fever. It didn’t look, though, for a 
long time as if we had done any good, for 
he seemed literally to be consuming with 
some inward fire when the physician ar- 
rived. For three days and nights it was 
a hand-to-hand struggle between life and 
death. Never did a patient have better 
care. I do not think the doctor left him 
for more than an hour at any one time — 
even then he was within easy call — until 
the crisis had passed. I well remember 
the morning. It was the Lord’s Day. 


184 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

We were all in the little hut talking in 
subdued tones by the fire on the hearth. 
The Carpenter had been telling in his 
quiet, modest way a few of the incidents 
of his life. It seems that the sentence of 
death had been commuted, because of pre- 
vious good character (I remember his 
look, partly scorn, partly sorrow, and 
partly a holy pride when he repeated this 
phrase), to imprisonment for life. Even 
this boon was not granted till the day set 
for his execution. Then followed nearly 
thirty years in prison, thirty years of 
almost absolute loneliness. Few, indeed, 
were the friends who followed him even 
with messages into the darkened world he 
had been so cruelly forced to enter. “A 
man’s foes,” said he, sadly, ‘'are those of 
his own household.” No word ever came 
to him from Peter (he now used, and with 
pleasure, the name his old friend had 
taken). For weeks, months, possibly a 
year or so, he had looked for some word 
from the associate of his brighter days. 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 185 

but none had come. It was not till he 
had regained his freedom a few weeks be- 
fore that he found out the cause of Peter’s 
silence. His freedom, by the way, was 
also a tardy justification. A deathbed 
confession well attested, and supported by 
certain evidence that it had revealed, had 
completely vindicated him of the charge 
under which he had been sentenced. He 
had practically died — though involunta- 
rily in this case — ^that another might live. 

In the old town of his youth he found 
very few who remembered him, and only 
one who remembered Peter. The lad who 
had seen the crazy man, as he called him, 
hurrying over the fields shouting out the 
words, ‘T go before you into Galilee,” 
could not forget him. It was he, now a 
prosperous merchant and member of the 
church where John once preached, who 
had told the Carpenter of the old hermit 
fisherman of the beautiful lake miles away 
in the depths of the woods, and who had 
suggested that possibly the hermit and his 


186 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

old friend might be one and the same 
person. “So,” said the Carpenter, “I 
sought him in Galilee till I found him.” 

“If my dreams had been true,” said 
Peter, startling us as though a voice had 
come from the dead, “I might think that 
you had come up out of your grave.” 

“What dreams?” said the doctor, qui- 
etly, while we all listened to see if indeed 
the delirium had passed away. 

“A long, long dream, how long I know 
not — that I was living in other days.” 

The recovery after this was rapid — he 
had nothing now to bother him — and his 
physical health, ever so true and clean, 
rallied to his help. We had sense enough 
to call him immediately and ever after- 
ward by the name the Carpenter told us 
had been his, and to make no reference 
to Galilee or our remarkable experience 
during the last few weeks. Time, of 
course, was needed for readjustment of 
his nerves. He knew that he had been 
sick — that was all the doctor said — for 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 187 

years. He knew that the last thirty years 
had not been years of idleness. Possibly, 
he guessed at times what he had been do- 
ing and why he was so far away from the 
home and toil of his younger manhood. 
But he said very little. He was himself 
once more, and dared not toy with a 
troubled past. Once more we took our 
names, though reluctantly. Neither birth 
nor choice of parents had given me a 
name equal to that of Thomas, and, as I 
said some time ago, I never call John by 
any other name than that the fisherman 
gave him. 

It is needless to say there was no 
change in Peter’s loyalty to his Master, 
and no change in his vivid reading of the 
Gospel story. It was a treat, indeed, to 
hear the two of them — ^the Carpenter and 
Peter — talk of Christ. The Carpenter 
had been tested as few men have been 
tested, yet he had come out of the trial 
with a faith as simple as that of a 
child. 'Tt seems to me,” said he, “that 


188 Simon Peter, Fisherman 

we are forced to one of two conclusions : 
either to put God fearfully far away from 
us — off sleeping or hunting where Elijah 
said the priests would find Baal — or 
mighty near. He means either every- 
thing to each one of us or nothing. And 
I/’ added he, “prefer to take the more 
defensible view that He is everything, and 
always nigh unto them who call upon 
Him.” 

The night before we left camp to re- 
turn to our homes the Carpenter and Pe- 
ter told us of their plans for the future. 
As soon as Peter was fully able — and that 
they thought would be in a few days — 
they were going down into the logging 
camps to carry the Gospel to men by na- 
ture and training much like themselves. 

“I guess Pve been idle for years,” said 
Peter, “and I know that the Carpenter has. 
I want to get once more to work. I want to 
tell of a Saviour who is able to keep a 
man to-day — to make salvation a fact of 
the life that we know as life; I want to 


Simon Peter, Fisherman 189 

tell it to men who will hear it without 
minding the way I say it. I don’t know 
the tools you use in your schools and city 
churches, and if I did I couldn’t use them 
— and if I could — ” He said no more, but 
laughed a loving, ringing, manly laugh — 
his whole soul in it, and his deepest re- 
gard for both of us in it, too' — that took 
away, even if it had been necessary, what 
might have seemed a reflection on the ser- 
mons we average men preach. 

The next morning we said ‘‘Good-bye,” 
and crossed the divide we named “Nine- 
teen Centuries” soon to reenter our work 
at home. 





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